Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise the issue of family resource centres. Several Members will have seen correspondence received this week from the family resource centre in Loughrea. There are 108 family resource centres doing amazingly important work across the country. Several Members have probably visited some of them. I was involved in arranging for workers in several family resource centres to join SIPTU. Workers in family resource centres have not received a pay increase since 2008. In view of the years of austerity, that can be understood to some degree. What cannot be understood is the refusal of Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, to attend the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, on this issue. What signal does it send if State bodies refuse to engage with the industrial relations machinery of the State? A bad example has been set by those at the very top of Government because when the Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, was Minister for Social Protection, his Department refused to attend the Workplace Relations Commission in relation to SIPTU and community workers. The refusal of Tusla to attend is totally unacceptable and workers in family resource centres deserve not just recognition and nice, kind words, but a pay increase. At the very least, the Government and State bodies should have the respect to attend the Workplace Relations Commission. I ask the Leader, a fellow trade unionist, to support my call for Tusla to attend the WRC and I ask for the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Bruton, to come to the House as early as possible in the autumn because there should not be a situation where vital workers providing vital services are ignored by the State and, worse than that, the industrial relations machinery of the State is also ignored by the Government. It is not good enough.