Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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1547. To ask the Minister for Health the estimated annual first-year and full year cost of implementing the Workplace Relations Commission agreement for all section 39 workers in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [29693/22]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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Under Section 39 of the Health Act 2004, the HSE provides financial assistance to organisations to provide services similar or supplementary to a service that the HSE may provide. However, Section 39 organisations are privately owned and run, and staff in these organisations are not public servants. Their terms and conditions of employment, once in line with employment legislation, are strictly between the employer and the employee.

In 2018, the HSE conducted a data gathering exercise in relation to an agreed list of 50 pilot organisations. The results of this analysis formed the basis of an engagement, facilitated by the Workplace Relations Commission. It showed that of those that returned data, different measures were taken in different organisations to achieve savings – in some places pay was cut, in others pay was not cut. In a number of instances, pay had already been restored.

An agreement was reached by the parties in October 2018, in relation to a process of pay restoration for staff employed by the 50 pilot agencies. Pay restoration commenced in April 2019 with an annual pay increase of up to €1,000. Any outstanding balance was paid in 2020 and 2021. A further WRC engagement followed in December 2020 in relation to a final phase of 250 organisations who were identified as part of the earlier agreement. A payment arrangement consisting of three phases was agreed with the first two payments to be made in 2021, and the third and final payment due to be made in 2023.

Pay restoration was applicable to Section 39 organisations who met certain criteria, rather than types of individual workers that are employed in them. Eligible Section 39 organisations included only agencies that had service arrangements in place back in 2013 and that were still under service arrangements in 2019. Only organisations who received in excess of an agreed, specified amount from the HSE by way of the Service Level Agreement process were included.

Pay restoration is absolutely limited and only applicable to those included in the initial WRC agreement. There is no scope to revisit the eligibility criteria for the process and that the process has reached a final resolution. As such, I am not in a position to provide detail on costs associated with introducing pay restoration for Section 39 organisations which fell outside of the 250 organisations included in the initial WRC agreement.