Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

Indian healthcare assistants who work in the private nursing home sector travelled this morning from all over Ireland to gather at the gates of the Dáil to protest in support of the right to family reunification. In New Zealand, Australia and the UK, Indian healthcare workers have a right to bring their families with them but not here. The Government recruited 1,000 qualified Indian nurses as healthcare assistants to perform vital and stressful work in our health service. However they are paid at rates so low that they are not at the minimum level needed to apply for the right for their partners to be here, let alone their kids. It is a policy of organised cruelty, given the stress that they are under. It is not even possible to make a phone call home, given the time difference, to talk your kids at the end of a shift. The policy is being reviewed by the Departments of Justice and Enterprise, Trade and Employment. The workers' organisation has made a submission seeking: pay parity with the HSE; that they be covered by the critical skills permit; and that their spouse has the right to live and work here. Can the Taoiseach give us an update on those policy reviews?

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