Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I recognise that we are in the middle of a global crisis and I have intervened on that issue twice in the past few days. However, there is also a real crisis nationally in the community and voluntary sector, which provides services for children and families. While I will refer to the situation in Sligo-Leitrim this morning, this is a nationwide issue.

The community and voluntary boards in Sligo-Leitrim provide and run services funded by Tusla but they are not in a position to pay their staff decent wages commensurate with their experience and qualifications. These boards are not in a position financially to pay increments to their staff, ensure that they have pension contributions or fund paid maternity and paternity leave. Many staff have no comprehensive sick pay arrangements. The boards provide supports and services for children, young people and families. They include home-based, targeted family supports to which clients are referred by the child and adolescent mental health service, CAMHS, disability services, local GPs and schools. The services provide supports to early school leavers, asylum seekers, refugees and Travellers and also provide parenting programmes.

The voluntary and community boards provide an extensive range of quality, professional caring services. The different services and their staff are held in high esteem because of the conscientious, caring and responsive nature of the services they provide. At one level, you might say money could not buy this service and that is, on another level, true. The services are run by voluntary boards, thereby saving the State huge sums of money. Critically, however, and this is why I refer to a crisis, many of the staff who provide these invaluable services are stuck on the bottom rung of pay structures. Many of them are ten or 15 years in the service but have received just one or, in some cases, no increments. There is no salary scale for staff and no financial credit for training and experience. Yes, there has been a core funding increase for family resource services, which is good. That core funding has gone to provide extra services and that is excellent. However, none of it is for family support workers, counsellors, youth workers, play therapists and the other staff who deliver the services. In Sligo-Leitrim alone, these services interact with several thousand families and children.

I know the Taoiseach will not disagree about the value of the services but, in order for them to provide a quality, nationwide service, including to the people of Sligo and Leitrim, they must be adequately funded. This requires not just a block grant but the ring fencing of a proportion of that money to ensure the staff who provide the service are paid a decent wage.

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