Company in Northern Ireland to deliver pandemic bonus to non-HSE staff

Sr Mary Ward of Marymount Care Centre with staff from private and voluntary nursing homes at the Department of Health earlier this month where they delivered letters of protest over not receiving the pandemic bonus. Picture: Colin Keegan/ Collins 

A company in Northern Ireland has won the tender from the HSE to deliver the pandemic bonus to non-HSE staff.

An estimated on the bonus payment, which was announced in January.

KOSI Corporation Ltd won the contract and has already started working with the HSE and Department of Health to identify who is eligible for the payment.

A HSE spokesman said KOSI “will be providing guidance on the process to those employers”. 

The company is registered in Newry, Co Down, and has worked with An Taisce and the Irish Prison Service, among others.

The much-criticised delays in paying cleaners, porters and other workers have been blamed by the HSE on technical difficulties in paying people outside their own payroll system.

Speaking in the Dáil, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said only six areas of healthcare are now being considered for remaining payments.

These include private and voluntary nursing homes and hospices, agency staff for the HSE, homecare workers contracted to the HSE, members of the Defence Forces doing Covid-19 work, long-term residential care centres and Dublin Fire Brigade paramedics. 

Up to Friday, October 14, some 85,632 HSE staff had received the payment. 

A further 38,569 people working for Section 38 agencies, which are HSE-funded to provide services, also received payment, bringing the total so far to 124,201.

Separately, the Private Hospitals Association made a plea for staff at 18 hospitals to also get this payment.

Chief executive Jim Daly said: “We must remember the State effectively contracted the capacity within private hospitals at the height of the pandemic when capacity in the public hospitals was under enormous strain and frontline healthcare workers in private hospitals provided time critical surgical and medical care to public patients on behalf of the HSE.”