Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise the issue of how we can ensure the continuation of vital community services across all our communities and pay and conditions for those workers who have been outsourced from the State and who provide vital care services through section 39 organisations or section 56 organisations. We all know how many community-based services in all our constituencies are utterly reliant on workers who are paid in this way - not directly by the State but indirectly by the State to provide vital public services. Labour will bring forward a motion in the House next week seeking to ensure better pay and conditions and, crucially, a framework for the sustainable delivery of public services across our communities through adequate resourcing and adequate recognition of a need for better pay and conditions for such workers.

We are conscious that until 2008, those employed in the community, voluntary and care sectors, such as section 39 workers, received pay increases under national wage agreements but they have not received pay increases since and they have no formal mechanism for collective pay bargaining. While public sector workers received a very welcome pay rise under Building Momentum, no pay rise or improvement in conditions was provided to the community and voluntary sector. We all know in our constituencies the vital public services provided by workers through these organisations, which include HSE-funded section 39 organisations, Tusla-funded section 56 organisations,section 10 homeless services funded indirectly through the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and a broad range of community services such as those managed by community employment supervisors, whose salaries are indirectly funded by the State.

This was raised yesterday on RTÉ Radio by Noeline Blackwell of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, who spoke about the difficulty affecting services such as hers, which provide vital public services to support victims and survivors of rape and other sexual offences and sexual abuse but are doing so without adequate sustainable funding frameworks and assurances as to adequacy of pay and pay increases for staff employed through the mechanisms I have described - Tusla-funded section 56 organisations in that case. I was in Cork on Monday and heard from parents of children with autism and other disabilities about the difficulty accessing services through organisations that are finding it difficult to retain and recruit qualified staff. Children with disabilities and their parents are losing out as a result. Indeed, the Harvey report on the delivery of health services by section 39 organisations funded by the HSE found high annual staff exit rates of up to one third annually with further reports since then of workers leaving to take up direct employment in the public service, such as directly through the HSE, due to the pay gap and the gulf in terms and conditions. I heard in Cork about how the NHS is coming over to recruit directly from section 39 and section 56 organisations. Clearly, the pay and conditions the NHS can offer as a direct public service are far better.

We call on the Government to establish a renewed relationship between not-for-profit organisations and the State based on a shared long-term vision and plan and to ensure a multi-annual funding framework to provide certainty for providers, their staff and, crucially, for people like the parents I met in Cork with FUSS Ireland who are dependent on the vital services being provided to their children by workers who are simply not getting adequate pay and conditions compared to workers employed directly through the HSE. Will the Tánaiste undertake to look favourably on the terms of our motion and engage directly with the not-for-profit sector?

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