Regina Doherty (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Cathaoirleach, and I might try my skills at doing the same. I want to raise with the Leader today the plight of our section 39 workers. We have, not just in my own area of north County Dublin and Fingal but probably in every county, organisations that are filled with nurses, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, support people and healthcare workers. All of them are expected to work for a fraction of the amount of wages we pay in the HSE or section 38 organisations. The reason this is such a crisis at the moment is that it is not just about pay anymore, although it would be enough if it was just about pay. I do not know how a young nurse, and it is mostly women in this sector we are talking about, is expected to provide 65% of the State services - that is the sector that is to grow, not the HSE-provided services - and to work for less than a nurse in a section 38 organisation such as St. Michael's House or the HSE. We have young women mainly, supported by administrative staff, trying to grow services. The source of ire that is there at the moment is not only the pay discrimination but also the fact that they are the source of recruitment for the HSE and the section 38s, and because of that, we have services that are not able to continue offering their services. They are telling us we are at crisis level and I do not believe the State is actually standing back and listening to them.

In 2018 and 2019, when I was actually in Government, we started negotiations on pay when it was only about pay. It was disingenuous of the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly in recent weeks - and not just the Minister, but also the Taoiseach - to throw back in the faces of those people, who are providing services for the most vulnerable in our country, that they already have been offered a pay deal and have not taken it. They absolutely know, and everybody knows, that it is disingenuous and disgraceful to offer them less money than we pay in the civil or public service for exactly the same work. I ask the Leader, in light of the fact that we have a budget in seven days' time, to use her good offices to talk to the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Minister of Health and tell them that without these people, and without paying them properly, we will not be able to provide services, particularly in the disability sector. We will have ten of thousands of people on the street, who normally just suffer in silence looking after their own families, giving out to us that we are just not doing the right thing