Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Those workers are in touch with us as well. I know many of them are very frustrated at the delay in these payments being issued. It should be acknowledged that almost 124,000 staff have received the €1,000 pandemic recognition payment. In essence, those are the people directly employed by the HSE, which includes many section 38 voluntary hospital staff, but many others are waiting. The Deputy identified a number of different categories. This issue has been discussed in recent days at a political level. It is a priority that we get these payments issued quickly. The Department of Health has brought in additional help to support it in working through some of the complexity that is there. It should not have taken this long but we are determined to get this completed as soon as possible because all these workers deserve these payments quickly.

See this speech in context