Dinny McGinley (Donegal South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Government and the HSE, as the statutory body responsible for the delivery of health and personal social services, recognise the important and valuable role of home helps in enabling older persons to live in their homes and communities in accordance with Government policy. Home help and home care are delivered by the HSE, voluntary, not-for-profit and private service providers. These non-statutory organisations are funded by the HSE under section 39 of the Health Act 2004, which provides that the executive may assist a body that provides a service similar or ancillary to those which the executive may provide. The pay and superannuation terms and conditions of the staff of such providers are not subject to the control of the Department of Health and, as such, these staff are not classified as public servants.

Access for home helps in voluntary organisations to a pension scheme similar to that provided for home helps in the employment of the HSE has been the subject of several Labour Court recommendations involving SIPTU, IMPACT and the HSE. Pension access for home helps directly employed by the HSE was addressed by the Department in 2005. Access to the scheme is strictly limited to staff employed directly by the HSE. It is not available to home helps employed by voluntary agencies because they are not public servants. In June 2009, following a hearing of union claims for access to a pension scheme for staff of voluntary home help providers, the Labour Court recommended that this issue should be dealt with by way of a gratuity scheme based on four and a half weeks' pay per year of service and that the scheme should take effect from the date of the home helps' collective agreement of August 2000.

Given the serious budgetary constraints under which the HSE has been operating in the period since the recommendation was made, the executive has not been in a position to provide the necessary funding to the employers concerned. This position was advised to the staff representatives and the agencies in February 2012. At present it is not possible, given the Government's financial requirement that health service funding should be focused to the greatest possible extent on maintaining front-line services, to indicate a point at which it may be possible to re-examine the issue.