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

The Minister of State, Deputy Neale Richmond, met the employers' organisation Nursing Homes Ireland earlier this month and agreed to its request to defer increases to minimum pay rates for healthcare assistants and home care workers from outside of the European Economic Area who hold work permits. This concession to employers was made despite nursing homes being increasingly owned by real estate investment trusts and operated by separate companies which are increasingly financed, at least in part, by means of private equity, according to the ESRI. The Minister of State did not meet with the representative body for the healthcare assistants, Migrant Nurses Ireland, despite its request for a meeting. He has now agreed to such a meeting this Thursday but this is after the announcement of the deferral. Non-EEA healthcare assistants, many of whom come from India, perform vital and stressful work in our nursing homes. They are isolated because their pay rates do not meet the threshold needed to bring their families with them. The Minister of State's decision to defer the pay increase is a concession to the owners, many of whom are very wealthy, and an insult to these workers, all of whom are low paid. How on earth can the Taoiseach justify that?

See this speech in context