Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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267. To ask the Minister for Health if he will confirm if the practice of on-call or sleepover duty is permitted in residential care facilities; if so, if this leads to staff exceeding a 48-hour working week; the rates of pay for sleepover duty; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35441/15]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Over 8,000 people with disabilities in Ireland live in over 900 residential settings of various types. These include homes that provide a 24/7, 365 days a year service and community based models which are staffed for certain parts of the evening, night and weekends. Residential services are provided by over 60 agencies. Residential settings vary in size from large congregated settings defined as 10 or more bedded facilities to community group homes to supported independent living.

In community group homes, the model of care is based on providing a family type residence with a house parent who sleeps over in the house but is very rarely required to be active during the night. The rate of payment for the sleepover has been determined by the Labour Court Recommendation 20837 which states that ‘Having regard to all the circumstances currently prevailing, the Court recommends that, with effect from the date of this Recommendation, staff should be paid an hourly rate in respect of each hour spent on sleepover in excess of 39 hours equal to the national minimum hourly rate.’

The European Working Time Directive (EWTD) provides that workers shall not be required to work in excess of 48 hours per week. It is currently not clear what proportion of these staff are compliant with the EWTD. However this is being addressed by a data collection exercise which the HSE has commenced. Using the results of the data collection exercise, the HSE will draw up an EWTD compliance plan for the disability sector for approval by my Department. This plan will establish clearly what the overall level of compliance is within the disability services and will set out a timeline for compliance with the EWTD.