Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will raise two issues if I may, the first of which is the ongoing crisis in University Hospital Limerick. It is ironic that last Friday, on the same day the Taoiseach was making a glitzy presentation at the University of Limerick, the crisis at University Hospital Limerick continued with an 85 year old grandmother who presented subsequently spending four days on a trolley. My colleague, Deputy Maurice Quinlivan, has written several times to the Minister for Health seeking a meeting and we are still waiting for an opportunity to discuss the crisis. I would appreciate the Leader's assistance in this regard because Members are entitled to speak to the Minister and express the grave concerns shared by many people in Limerick regarding the ongoing and ever-worsening trolley crisis in University Hospital Limerick.

An excellent and detailed TASC - Think-tank for Action on Social Change - report is being launched in Buswells Hotel this morning by Senator Alice-Mary Higgins who deserves great credit for doing so. Entitled, Living with Uncertainty: The Social Implications of Precarious Work, it is a hell of a report. It shows how precarious work affects many people's mental and physical health, many precarious workers are not covered by either the public medical card system or private health system and precarious work forces people to be dependent on others. To put the issue in context, one in five people is employed on a part-time or temporary basis and precarious work has increased significantly.

It is funny that my colleague, Senator Boyhan, spoke of correcting the record. In that regard, I could speak about the childcare, transport and storage or education sectors but I will focus on the home care sector. On Thursday, 22 March, Senator Colm Burke misled the House - unintentionally in my view - when he twice stated that workers employed by private providers of home care were receiving the same rates of pay as home helps employed by the Health Service Executive. I accept the Senator made that statement in good faith and I expect he will be shocked to learn not only that the rates of pay differ but that they differ significantly.

The home care sector has three types of providers, namely, public, voluntary and private. Public and voluntary providers are fully funded through the HSE and the average rate of pay for home care workers in these sectors is €15 per hour, which is a reasonable rate of pay for the challenging job done by the professionals in question. The voluntary sector rate is between €11.50 and €12.50 per hour, whereas rates in the private sector are between €10.10 and €10.50 or €5 per hour less than in the public sector. However, the problem does not stop there because those who work for private home care providers are not paid for time spent travelling between clients, during which time they must work for free. Only one type of contract operates in the private home care sector, namely, a precarious work contract under which workers do not know what hours they will work from one week to the next. It is a scandal that the sector is built on poverty pay. That is the truth and it is not good enough for the workers and certainly not good enough for the people they look after. It also explains the high rate of turnover among staff in private home care providers. It is incumbent on Senators to have a debate on the sector and recognise there is a major problem. We must not be cheerleaders for a private sector that is built on poverty pay.