Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I reiterate my colleague, Senator Devine's support for the Bill. We welcome the fact that Fine Gael recognises the need to regulate the sector. It is extremely important and Senator Burke has put a lot of work into this Bill. I ask him to take my comments constructively. They concern what is missing from the Bill and, with all due respect, from the Minister of State's speech.

The big issue in home care is terms and conditions and pay. Senator Nash referred to this. Of course regulation has to protect the client and professional standards but if the elephant in the room, the appallingly low rates of pay in the sector, is not tackled, a quality service will not be provided. There will be such a high level of staff turnover that clients will find that the person who cared for them last month has left and another has moved on. I have personal experience of this because prior to getting this job I was a trade union official and we had a dedicated campaign on home care for years. There is a shocking differentiation between the rates of pay for HSE home help workers, who are relatively well paid because they are unionised and have campaigned for that pay over the past 25 years, and the shocking rates of pay for private home care providers, the ones whose wonderful radio advertisements we hear each day. Someone working for a private home care provider earns the minimum wage or slightly above that. Is that all our loved ones are worth, €9.15 an hour? If we are serious about improving standards we have to tackle that issue and there is a simple way to do it, bring in the various partners, work towards an employment regulation order that sets standards of pay for the industry. It can be done but there seems to be something in the Fine Gael DNA that means it always forgets about the workers and their pay and conditions when it is regulating.In the Minister of State's speech, she says many fine things. She makes reference to the tender process. She says "all new home care packages approved by the HSE will be provided by organisations that have been approved by the HSE following a detailed tender process". Is there anything in the detailed tender process that references a decent rate of pay for home-care providers? There is not. Until the Minister of State incorporates that, she is not being serious about dealing with one of the key issues in the sector.

The other issue I will raise about HSE home-care packages is that what always struck me from my work in the sector is that almost all of those home care packages are outsourced to private providers even when we have HSE home-care workers looking for more hours of work. They are outsourced because it is easier. The shocking thing is it is more expensive. While the HSE providers are paying €14 to €16 an hour and the private providers are paying anywhere between €9.15 and €10 an hour, the private providers end up charging a higher hourly rate than the HSE home-help providers. They do that because it is their profit. It is more expensive for the taxpayer to do it this way yet it seems to be orthodoxy in HSE policy. The attitude is that the Government is giving it a certain amount this year so it will outsource it. The problem is that the outsourcing process is fundamentally flawed because the rates of pay are so poor. I do not think the Minister of State will contradict me because I have demonstrated that there is nothing in the regulations being proposed, the Minister of State's speech or the tender process that addresses the issue of pay.

The issue of pay is a very simple thing to address. It can be regulated. I will give a different example from a different sector. We have just signed an employment regulation order for the contract cleaning industry which stipulates minimum rates of pay above the minimum wage and stipulates a range of increases. The only reason that will not happen in this sector is because the Minister of State lacks the political will to do so. I would welcome the Minister of State standing up and saying she will prove me wrong and tackle the issue of low pay. If we do not tackle the issue of low pay, we will never really tackle the issue of quality care. Does anyone in this room really believe our loved ones are worth nothing more than €9.15 or €9.50 an hour? For the level of care and attention that is required, we need to be serious and ensure the system is regulated, the sector is regulated and that decent pay rates apply. Unfortunately, I have not seen any evidence of the political will to tackle that. I would love to hear a response on that.