Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Are any of the additional staff brought in to deal with Covid-19 addressing the issue of the recruitment of front-line workers necessary to deal with the crisis or the issue of the conditions and pay such workers have to accept? I have raised this matter with the Taoiseach a few times but the more I raise it, the more shocking and extensive are the emails and contacts I get from people. For example, a number of weeks ago I raised the widespread issuing of zero-hour contracts to contact tracers by CPL. I have got a slew of emails since I highlighted that scandal, which was apparently a mistake although I will tell the Taoiseach in a minute why it was not.

I will give the Taoiseach a flavour of what I have been told by the people who are becoming contact tracers, nearly all of whom are science graduates, it is important to say. The issues they have include not being told if they were to be paid for training, which had so far taken 11 hours for one person when they contacted me; being asked to work before being issued contracts; being treated as if in employment while without pay or contracts; being directed to spend their own time practising and learning at home; being given zero-hour contracts; a lack of a human resources presence or anyone to whom to address queries; poor pay at €24,000 per annum; and a lack of sick pay and supports despite the potential for mental health issues for contact tracers highlighted by the training. These are taken from one email from one person.

I also get emails from people who work in testing who are also on zero-hour contracts. All the phrases that were in the mistaken contract are also in contracts issued to people working as medical scientists in laboratories who have been carrying out testing since March. These are also highly qualified people who are on the most rubbish contracts one could imagine. I have also been contacted by other medical scientists telling me that they are applying for jobs but cannot get them at a time when we are saying that such people are needed in the laboratories. They are having to sign on for social welfare even though the testing system was unable to function for two weekends because there was not enough staff. Despite this, qualified people looking for these jobs cannot get them.

There is also the matter of student nurses, to which the response has been most unbelievable. I brought up with the Taoiseach a couple of weeks ago the matter of student nurses not being paid for working on the front line in hospitals. Does the Taoiseach know how many people watched the video of our engagement on that matter? It was 250,000. There were a slew of comments thanking God that somebody had raised these student nurses' plight because they are working for nothing. This is how we are treating those on the front line. This is how we are addressing the issue of building up the permanent capacity we need to deal with Covid-19.

They have rubbish contracts and student nurses are being exploited, and we are not even employing qualified people who are desperate to work in the testing and tracing area.

What is going on? Is there any sense of awareness of these matters in the Taoiseach's Department or the Cabinet subgroup? Will the Taoiseach address this as a matter of urgency? I do not see how we can deal with Covid-19 with such a state of affairs.

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