Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach is not living in the land of reality with regard to these agencies. He is in denial, as is Government. We have met the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Minister for Finance. The bottom line is that I am not offering up that analysis. It is commissioned research that the Taoiseach should read but it is also the reality on the ground. I have met representatives of St Joseph's Foundation in Charleville, which has done heroic work for years.

We all know about the history of the relationship between the State and these organisations. The more recent history is that Government instructed the agencies to cut pay in line with the financial emergency measures in the public interest, FEMPI, legislation but when it came to the restoration of pay, these agencies were left out. This was never an industrial relations issue. The unions will look after their members but what they have not done is look after the agencies and they will not do so because it is not their remit. Many posts will not benefit from pay restoration because workers who came in after the cuts do not get any restoration so the agencies get no funding for that. Neither is there retrospective funding in terms of those agencies that have engaged in pay restoration.

The situation is very grave for agencies like Kerry Parents and Friends Association, Ability West, St. Joseph's Foundation and the hospices which have told me they will cut services in January. That is the reality. They have been shortchanged. What has happened is fundamentally wrong. These agencies should have been kept in line with the HSE, which was always the case and which had been underpinned by Labour Court recommendations down through the years and indeed since 2010 onwards. It is not fair to say what the Taoiseach has said with regard to them.

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