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

I got a letter yesterday from the HSE's health business services, HBS, in response to a parliamentary question. It is the interestingly named business division of the HSE, which seems like a contradiction in terms. Why do we need a business section of the health service? This was a response to a question about the contract that was awarded to CPL for recruitment in the context of Covid-19. As the Taoiseach knows, CPL has been recruiting people from Be On Call for Ireland, nurses, contact tracers and those working in testing on rubbish temporary contracts, as I would see them. By the way, if the Taoiseach wants to know why the numbers are not going down, he might look a little bit closer at the fact that people on CPL contracts do not get sick pay and so they are under pressure to go into work. The people we are recruiting to the front line do not get sick pay. It is no wonder we have cases of Covid-19. Leaving that aside, this letter confirms that CPL went through no tendering process for the contracts to recruit for the health service during Covid-19. Rather, it was "using existing HSE Procurement Frameworks" and "a framework agreement for other recruitment services", to mention some of the jargon it employs.

This is a hugely valuable contract, although it has not been said how much it is worth. It is worth noting that in the past week CPL has been sold to a Japanese multinational company for in excess of €300 million and the two owners of CPL walk away with €110 million. To what extent has the State inflated the value of that company and the huge payout that those people are getting by giving contracts where there is not even a tendering process and where they are recruiting to the health service for rubbish contracts without even sick pay? That is a scandal, as far as I am concerned. Whatever excuse there might have been in the emergency in the early months of the pandemic, for that to continue to be the situation and for CPL to be the vehicle for recruiting to the front line of the health services in the current situation is an absolute scandal and unacceptable.

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