'Services will be brought to halt' if hundreds of health and care staff strike 

Fórsa trade union members Maryan Lucid, Andrea Heffernan, and Siobhan O'Dowd, during strike action at Enable Ireland in Tralee, Co Kerry, last September. Strike action may well be on the cards again. Picture: Domnick Walsh 

A proposal for indefinite strike action at a number of community and voluntary sector agencies funded by the HSE has been backed by the Fórsa national executive.

Ireland’s largest public sector trade union said the action will likely involve hundreds of health and care staff as it slammed a “foot-dragging” approach by Government on pay and conditions inequality.

Section 39 agencies provide a range of residential and day services across the country to people with disabilities, mental health issues, addiction, and to domestic and sexual violence services, under service level agreements with the HSE.

“Up to a third of experienced professional health and care staff are leaving their jobs in these agencies every year to take up better remunerated employment with the HSE and elsewhere,” Fórsa general secretary Kevin Callinan said.

We will ballot for indefinite industrial action in a number of employments, and Fórsa will foot the wage costs of those staff who go on strike. Services will simply be brought to a halt. At this stage, no other course of action will drive the point home.

Until 2008, workers in these agencies received pay increases under national wage agreements. However, during the financial crash they were subject to Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (FEMPI) pay cuts in line with the same cuts applied to public sector pay.

Fórsa said limited pay restoration measures were won by unions after a battle in 2019, but the pay in these agencies remains significantly behind. Furthermore, no formal mechanism for collective pay bargaining exists for workers in the sector, according to the union.

While community, voluntary, and not-for-profit Section 39 agencies operate under agreements with the HSE, Section 56 agencies operated in a similar way for children’s services and are funded by Tusla.

One-day strike action by Fórsa members took place last year at agencies in Galway and Mayo, as well as St Joseph’s Foundation in Cork and Enable Ireland in Cork and Kerry.

Mr Callinan said these actions garnered strong support across the political spectrum, but said the Government, Department of Health or HSE had not taken any “meaningful action” since to address the issue.

[The Government] has spectacularly failed to grasp the link between its chronic underfunding of the services and the subsequent failure to meet the HSE’s recruitment targets in, for example, disability services. For every member of staff freshly recruited, another experienced staff member is walking out the door. 

"The situation is both unacceptable and unsustainable. Government action is essential."