Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I want to return to the strike by health support workers. Some 10,000 health support workers are due to take industrial action next Thursday. Their trade union, SIPTU, has worked patiently for years through the industrial relations machinery of the State, as the Taoiseach has said. The workers' employer is the HSE, which willingly took part in the public service stability agreement and formally signed off on it. The HSE accepted the recommendations of the job evaluation scheme that was agreed in 2017. It set out the staff numbers to be upgraded and to be re-evaluated with regard to remuneration. However, the HSE is now refusing to honour those recommendations. The 10,000 workers in question are the backbone of our health services across 38 hospitals and healthcare facilities. They provide household, porter and catering facilities. They also provide direct assistance to medics as healthcare assistants, maternity care assistants, laboratory aides and surgical instrument technicians. Their strike is not about any new pay claim but about requiring the Government to honour its side of an agreement that both sides entered into freely. As the Taoiseach knows, workers delivered on very difficult pay deals during the economic crisis. They honoured agreements which were instrumental in securing our economic recovery. It would be an act of betrayal for the State to go back on its commitments now.

What is at stake is not simply the honouring of an agreement but the maintenance between the State and employees of fundamental trust. SIPTU has called on the Minister for Health to intervene. The Government should not have allowed matters to reach this point. The workers involved are essential to the running of our health system and they are also among the lowest paid. Does the Taoiseach accept that this re-evaluation process was formally agreed between the unions and employers? Why is the Government undermining confidence in the HSE and the Department of Health as honest dealmakers in the name of the State? Will the Taoiseach or Minister for Health intervene to ensure this strike is averted by Thursday?

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