Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

For many years Sinn Féin has been calling for a statutory sick pay scheme. When employees cannot access financial support when unwell, they ultimately go to work. As we have seen over Covid, that spreads diseases and causes further illnesses in the community. We need to plan for this.

There are two issues I want to highlight. I am raising them because they arise repeatedly in my constituency office. We cannot talk about sick leave without also talking about access to GPs. This is a genuine issue across the country. Furthermore, we cannot talk about sick leave without asking low-paid workers to keep a kitty in their back pocket of €70 or €75 in case they need it when they get sick. Where a certificate is asked for immediately, there also needs to be a very strong focus on pathways to obtaining it. I understand medical certification is essential to the integrity of the scheme but this was caveated in a reference to access to GP services. Demanding that a worker obtain a medical certificate immediately puts a great financial burden on him or her that needs to be considered. That is before recognising the delays that have been established and are well known in accessing medical care. We do not need to see circumstances arise in which those who are unwell or, heaven forbid, injured must go to work simply because they cannot afford not to.

With regard to low-paid workers specifically, the cost of going to a GP if one is not a medical card holder can be the equivalent of half a day's pay. That is not something people are able to absorb at this point. The cost of living is rising, as we have discussed multiple times, and it is likely to continue to do so. We need to pay heed to the important lessons we learned during the pandemic, one of which is that access to paid sick leave is a genuinely strong instrument when it comes to public health. Equally, we must recognise the barriers, including the financial barriers and delayed appointments, that will prevent workers who need to access the scheme from doing so. The scheme will simply be beyond their reach. I ask the Tánaiste to take on board and address these issues and ensure those who genuinely need the scheme can access it and benefit from it, particularly regarding the potential for a rebate of the medical outlay for low-paid workers if he is not open to re-examining the immediate-certification need. Until free GP care is in place and we have made significant progress on GP access, what appears to be a very well-intentioned Bill will simply not deliver for those who most need it, namely, the workers in our communities and in certain sectors whom Deputy O'Reilly outlined, so they will not have to go to work when they should not do so.

See this speech in context