Community and voluntary workers blocked from nursing home assignments

A spokesperson for the Department of Health said that “the HSE is currently finalising proposed redeployment arrangements” with Section 39 organisations.

The Department of Health has “blocked” proposals to deploy so-called Section 39 workers working for agencies into nursing homes, the epicentre of Ireland’s Covid-19 crisis, in order to avoid short-term costs, it has been claimed.

Forsa, the union representing the workers, called for such staff trained to work in community and voluntary settings to be brought under the remit of the HSE for the duration of the pandemic in a move akin to the Government’s takeover of private hospitals.

It said that the Department will not sanction such a move, despite the HSE allegedly being amenable, as it “would lead to marginal additional short-term costs”.

Section 39 employees are not public servants but their employers are grant-aided by the HSE to provide services, in this case in the disabilities, homelessness, and addiction services sectors.

Traditionally the pay of such workers is indexed along the same scales as that of public sector health employees.

“These agencies need maximum stability in a time of crisis. They are also a source of qualified and Garda-vetted staff, who have the skills needed to hit the ground running in the coronavirus response in our communities,” Eamonn Donnelly, Forsa’s head of health, said.

He said that staff in the sector are saying “they are ready to make a bigger contribution”.

“They will respond if the Government seeks their support, and the best way to facilitate this is to bring the Section 39s under the HSE umbrella,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health said that “the HSE is currently finalising proposed redeployment arrangements” with Section 39 organisations.

“The Department is supportive of this effort,” they said.

The crisis in nursing homes and long term residential care facilities has become the overriding negative story of the pandemic in an Irish context, with well over 50% of the deaths seen here originating in such settings where residents are among the most vulnerable to the coronavirus.

Meanwhile, Mr Donnelly claimed that some Section 39 agencies are at risk of failing as a result of the virus, which has ravaged the State’s economy.

“Thousands of vulnerable people depend on their services, and the liability would fall on an already overstretched HSE if any of them fail,” he said.

He said that Forsa and other unions have long maintained that Section 39 workers essentially supply public services, and that they should be treated in the same way as mainstream public service health workers.

Section 39 workers saw their pay cut as a result of the 2008 recession in the same manner as public sector employees.

However, though the economy recovered and public workers saw their pay restored, Section 39s’ own terms were only restored after a lengthy appeal to the Workplace Relations Commission in 2018.