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

When I spoke to the Taoiseach about his failure to pay student nurses and the use of temporary agency contracts for contract tracers and medical scientists carrying out testing, he baulked when I suggested that the Government is trying to fight Covid on the cheap. I should rephrase it and state that the Government is trying to fight Covid on the basis of cheap labour and utter gross exploitation. The latest example of this is just absolutely scandalous. Some 15 contract tracers employed four weeks ago on these crappy CPL contracts that I exposed a number of weeks ago have not been paid a cent for the past four weeks despite working on the front line in Covid. They have not been paid at all despite being signed off the pandemic unemployment payment, having no income to pay their bills and being absolutely critical to the contact tracing we need to keep ahead of this virus. They have not been paid by CPL

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