Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is now nine months since the pandemic bonus for front-line workers was announced. HSE workers were paid quite quickly after that but there are other workers across the State and in every community in Ireland, who would have worked extremely hard during that period and exposed themselves to Covid, whether they were in the fire service, cleaners in our hospitals and healthcare providers, nursing home staff or in the Defence Forces. A lot of these people are getting very frustrated. They feel they have made just as much of a contribution as many others. It has now been nine months. The HSE has said that there are various complications and so on but this should have been anticipated from the start when this was announced. Nine months on, when are these front-line workers, who worked so hard and served us all, going to get their bonus payments?

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