Patricia Ryan (Kildare South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank an Teachta O'Reilly for bringing forward this Bill. Its purpose is to amend the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 to make incidents of Covid-19 infection notifiable to the Health and Safety Authority. This is an important change which, if it had been in place before the pandemic, could have prevented many instances of infection from spreading. I am thinking, in particular, of the meat plants. Back in August, I received an email from an employee of a meat plant in Kildare who told me that 60 other employees had tested positive for Covid-19 over the bank holiday weekend but the company was refusing to close. As the story developed, it exposed some of the meat plants as unlimited companies that do not report their profits. Those profits are made on the backs of mainly foreign workers, who are exploited in that they have little access to benefits like sick pay. That served to make the pandemic worse than it should have been.

We also saw how the lack of support given to nursing homes and care facilities meant that they were disproportionately affected by the pandemic. I have spoken to the managers of some of these services and heard horror stories of staff meeting in car parks and swapping masks and gloves for gowns and sanitisers from the boots of cars. They have been badly let down by the Government. One nursing home in my constituency was at crisis point when 29 staff were infected with Covid-19. It received little support. It was a private nursing home and, as we know, we are overly reliant on private nursing homes. Our older people deserve better. We need to develop public nursing home provision. As with housing and hospitals, commodification of nursing homes does not serve the public good.

It is the responsibility of the State to care for our older people, not to create profits for private companies.

Under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005, employers used to be required to inform the HSA of infectious diseases in the workplace, as well as other illnesses or personal injury. A section of the law was changed by ministerial regulation in 2016 to remove the requirement for infectious diseases to be notified. This change was described by Patricia King of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions as a major flaw. This change was also questioned by a Fianna Fáil Deputy, who is also a barrister, when he asked if it was legal to remove it via ministerial order given that it was put in place by means of primary legislation and a vote in the Dáil.

Recommendation No. 5 in the final report of the Oireachtas Special Committee on Covid-19 Response states:

That the Government 1. Make provision for a statutory sick pay scheme to cater for low paid workers such as those in nursing homes and meat plants, and

2. Make Covid-19 a notifiable disease under health and safety regulations The committee further recommends that regulations around general employment permits in the meat processing sector make provision for a sick scheme for workers by the employers concerned and that these regulations be made within six months of the date of this report.

This was an all-party committee report. I hope Members of all parties and none will support this Bill.

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