Ryan O'Meara (Tipperary North, Fianna Fail)

The new Nenagh community nursing unit was taken over by the HSE last year to be used as a step-down facility for UHL. A private company, Bartra Healthcare, was contracted to run this facility for one year. That is now due to end at the end of this month. Bartra wrote to its 74 employees on 3 July of this year informing them that their contracts of employment and status as employees would transfer over to the HSE under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment), TUPE, Regulations 2003. However, 41 of those employees wrote to me last Friday informing me that the HSE has still not confirmed whether this is the case. There are 74 employees in this facility who have done excellent work as healthcare workers. Most of them are international workers who came to this country on visas to do this exact work. They now do not know where they stand.

I wrote to the Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, on this matter and her private secretary responded. I appreciate it is not the job of the Government to directly employ these people; it is the job of the HSE to do so. However, we need clarity on this urgently. Three things are needed. First, we need to know whether Bartra Healthcare and the HSE have an agreement on this. Second, we need to know whether the TUPE regulations stand in this case. Third, while this is happening and while we are finding these things out, we need confirmation, as a matter of urgency, that this will not delay the transfer of the community nursing unit back to the people of Nenagh.

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