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

I welcome the Taoiseach back. My question to him today is who cares for the carers. We in the Labour Party are not sure that his Government appreciates the crisis in care. A protest is currently taking place outside the Dáil by childcare and early years education providers. We all hear all the time from parents, staff and workers in the childcare sector who are being failed. Parents cannot access affordable childcare for their children, staff cannot afford to live on the wages in the sector and children are being failed by this.

It is not only a crisis in childcare. Yesterday, Fórsa, SIPTU and the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, which represent 5,000 staff in the community and voluntary care sector, all balloted for indefinite strike action from 17 October. Withdrawing labour is no easy decision. It is a last resort, but what other option do workers in this sector have? These are workers who provide a lifeline to Ireland's most vulnerable communities, caring for our homeless, providing disability services and providing support for older people, and they provide these essential services on behalf of the State, on behalf of the Government, yet it has washed its hands of responsibility for them.

It is almost one year since this House debated a Labour Party motion to fund pay rises for workers in section 39 organisations and others in the community and voluntary sector. The Government allowed the motion to pass. It did not oppose it but has done nothing since. Now, creaking services are being held together by staff who are facing another winter of spiralling housing costs with wages that have stagnated. One worker from a section 39 organisation stated that serving and supporting the most vulnerable people in our society makes them very proud but that the Government offer compromises the future of organisations like the one they work in:

Staff turnover is high. Nurses and care staff are leaving every day for better care and conditions in section 38 areas ... is a bitter pill to swallow in the current cost-of-living crisis. Rising inflation, increased interest rates and rising childcare costs are crippling.

That is one person's testimony, but it represents the experience of many in the sector.

Services are suffering as a result. Disability and homelessness services are near collapse. Almost 3,000 people have been forced into emergency accommodation due the Government's failed housing policy. The United Nations has criticised Ireland for potential violations in disability services. Yesterday, the Central Statistics Office, CSO, confirmed that 3,600 sexual offences were reported in the year to this spring. These are official statistics. They understate the scale of the problems. Every family is in some way reliant on the care of community and voluntary workers, yet current Government policy is that the value of workers who support people in homelessness and disability services and through rape crisis and domestic violence, if they work for section 10, 39 or 56 organisations, is somehow less than the value of the equivalent workers who are employed directly by the State to provide the same services.

Playing chicken with community and voluntary workers in the way the Government has done is irresponsible, verging on reckless. My question about these heroic workers who have had no pay rise since 2008 is whether the Government will accept their demands for pay parity and will it apply future public pay sector agreements to community and voluntary service workers? Will it take action on the request in the Labour Party motion that was passed exactly one year ago?

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