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

I am glad to have the opportunity to speak on our Labour Party motion and to second it. Our motion seeks to secure better pay and conditions for those employed in the community, voluntary and care sector, such as section 39, section 56 and section 10 workers. These are thousands of workers who work for independent, non-State agencies to provide vital support services in the community and voluntary sector. I pay tribute to my colleague, Deputy Duncan Smith, our party's health spokesperson, who has proposed the motion so eloquently and put the case for it so clearly. As he said, while there is a good deal of detail in it, it is a simple ask. We are simply seeking a mechanism for pay bargaining on behalf of these workers.

I thank those who work in the community care and voluntary sectors. I welcome those joining us in the Gallery: members of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, SIPTU and Fórsa, many of whom work directly in the sector. I welcome Noeline Blackwell, director of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, who spoke so clearly in the media this week about the issues facing those who provide essential care services and enormous support to the health and care services of this State but who are not given adequate pay and conditions, certainly not pay and conditions commensurate with those for the work done directly by those employed by the HSE. I thank those in the Gallery and those they represent for their service to the State and to the people who live in it and the many who require their services. They are among the heroes of Irish society, filling the gaps left where the State does not have capacity to provide. It is no exaggeration to say that without their work, many of society's most vulnerable members would be left disconnected from their communities.

We know that many organisations, including those Deputy Duncan Smith named, organisations such as Enable Ireland, the Irish Wheelchair Association, the Rehab Group and many more are lauded and rightly praised as bedrocks of the care and voluntary sector. Their staff provide vital services in communities across the State in supporting those with disabilities, lending their ears to those suffering mental health crises, extending help to people who have lost their homes and giving stability and support to those victimised by sexual or domestic violence.

The question, however, is who is caring for those who care for us, who is providing the necessary value and who is valuing the care workers in our society. Despite being effectively paid from the public purse to deliver a public service, the fact that these workers are in indirect employment arrangements means they are in many cases not given decent pay or the same pay and conditions as other workers. As Deputy Duncan Smith said, this motion and the campaign do not seek to bring such workers directly into the public service; rather, they seek just to recognise adequately the work they do, commensurate with the work done by those directly employed within the public service. We know that, for example, section 39 bodies were required to reduce pay during the economic crisis, but the process of pay restoration has been much slower and patchy. I hasten to add that part of the reason there are such issues today stems from the effort made by voluntary sector organisations to lessen cuts imposed previously. All voluntary organisations reduced salaries previously, but many used mechanisms more appropriate to them than the methods applied in the public sector. Workers across the sector are now at least 9.5% behind public sector comparators on ratification of the review terms of the public sector agreement.

This is not just about direct pay; clearly, it is also about pension coverage, sick pay coverage and contract terms, with fixed-term contracts being more prevalent. We know that significant numbers of individuals are affected by this. We know that the HSE funds an estimated 1,700 agencies through service level arrangements under section 39 of the Health Act 2004. We know that there are other service level arrangements under other sections of that Act, with, again, many more affected there.

As a lifelong trade unionist, I have always maintained that the best way to improve pay and conditions and quality of life for employees is through collective bargaining and the trade union movement. That is our belief as a labour party. I welcome the trade union officials and activists who have joined us in the Gallery. We know that pay claims have been submitted for workers in the care and voluntary sector as part of the ICTU-led Valuing Care, Valuing Community campaign, which my colleague, Deputy Duncan Smith, mentioned. That campaign is supported by SIPTU, Fórsa and the INMO in particular to ensure that staff working through these voluntary bodies will have equivalent pay and conditions to their counterparts employed directly through not just the HSE but also Tusla. Trade union officials have communicated to me and my colleagues their frustration with the challenges which arise for section 10, section 39 and section 56 workers who attempt to organise through trade unions. When it comes to collective bargaining, the sponsoring Department will usually reiterate that it is not the direct employer. Typically, employers may have an inability to pay. The EU directive on collective bargaining and minimum wages will oblige member states to increase collective bargaining thresholds. That may well lead to a significant increase in Ireland's very low collective bargaining percentage threshold. My colleagues and I have welcomed last week's report by the high-level group on collective bargaining. We want to see the implementation of its recommendations.

The need to ensure proper valuing of care provided through the care and voluntary sectors has been brought into sharper focus by not just the Covid-19 pandemic but also the acute cost-of-living crisis we now face. So many of the workers who help struggling people are themselves struggling to pay their bills. A constituent of mine who works for an organisation funded under section 39 has told me of their experience, explaining that care workers, who are expected to have a degree in social care or an equivalent qualification, and team leaders, who are required to have a management qualification, are simply very difficult to recruit. Where they are recruited, it is nearly impossible for them to secure 39-hour contracts to sustain themselves. This is therefore not just about hourly pay rates but also about hours of work and treatment at work, treatment which is challenging to contest on behalf of workers because they do not have the same access to the industrial relations mechanisms of the State.

As Deputy Duncan Smith said, the hidden victims of the piecemeal arrangements in place throughout the community and voluntary sector are those who rely on the services provided, that is, service users themselves.

They are really affected by turnover among section 39 workers, which we know from the Harvey report is as much as one third. Churn is high and this denies stability and consistency of service provision to many service users. I will read a few lines sent to me by someone whose support worker is employed by the Irish Wheelchair Association. He calls her Mary. He said:

Mary helps me to live a normal life. [...] Because of Mary and her colleagues, people life me can get that bit of help to stay at home, and we can have a bit of company too. That made all the difference during the pandemic. [...] As far as I’m concerned, she should be paid the highest salary possible. Certainly not less than people who do the same job, but working for the HSE.

That testimony goes to show the difference section 39 workers make in supporting the lives of those who need their services and their care. It is not just assisted living support workers either. As I said, we heard recently on RTÉ radio from Noeline Blackwell of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre. She spoke about the difficulty affecting services such as hers that provide vital public services to support victims and survivors of rape and other sexual offences, but do so in the absence of sustainable multi-annual funding frameworks and assurances as to adequacy of pay for staff.

I was in Cork last Monday and heard from parents of children with autism and other disabilities. Parents organising through Families Unite for Services and Support, FUSS, Cork, told me the difficulties in securing services for their children are often due to the fact that organisations like Enable Ireland simply cannot recruit and retain staff. Among other things, the parents told me the HSE and even the NHS have been approaching staff members of voluntary sector organisations, seeking - understandably - to entice them to work directly for the public sector in this country and others where workers will have much better pay and clearly much better conditions and security of employment. Of course, the knock-on effect is felt by the parents I met in Cork, whose autistic children are thereby being denied timely and effective access to services. They are faced with long waiting lists because staff are not available to the organisations providing the support on behalf of the State, and of all us.

In the interests of those children and of the many individuals and communities who really need the services provided through voluntary organisations we need to see support from the Government. It must support workers to remain in their jobs and support them to have access to decent pay and conditions. That is what our motion seeks to do and it is a simple and straightforward ask. My colleagues will speak more about the individual provisions contained within our motion and the specific points in it. I hope the Minister will hear our call, and the calls of the trade unions, individual workers, service users and the organisations upon whose help they are reliant. That call is for the Minister and for all the Government because this is a whole-of-government issue. The call is for it to take meaningful steps towards pay restoration, pay increases, and better conditions for workers in the community and voluntary sector. The sector needs sustainable to funding to ensure our communities are truly valued. That is what the Valuing Care, Valuing Community campaign, which we are proud to support, is about and that is what our motion is about. We are glad the Government is not opposing the motion but we hope, as Deputy Duncan Smith said, for a meaningful response that will have a positive impact on the workers, and indeed the service users, we are speaking about today.

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