Government urged to raise funding for disability and voluntary charities

Ivan Cooper, chief executive of The Wheel: 'We have thousands of people on waiting lists, it’s (the pay disparity in the sector) manifesting itself in the silent suffering of people.'

The Government must increase funding of disability and voluntary charities or risk the “silent suffering” of the population.

That is the message from the pre-budget submission of The Wheel, Ireland’s national association of charities, amid news that workers within those sectors are being balloted regarding potential strike action.

Ivan Cooper, chief executive of The Wheel, said that the pay disparity between the voluntary sector and State services, where routinely the same service is being provided, has stretched to between 10% and 12% —leading to an extended recruitment crisis in the sector.

“Despite their indispensable role, community and voluntary service providers are grappling with a pay and staffing crisis that is blocking access to and affecting the quality of vital services,” he said, adding that it was time for the government to “urgently” place pay parity on the agenda.

Pay restoration

The funding of the State-funded community and voluntary sectors remains an outlier in that the pay conditions of Sections 39, 56, and 10 charities have never been restored since the 2008 financial crash, despite pay restoration having since been processed across the majority of the public sector.

“We have thousands of people on waiting lists, it’s (the pay disparity in the sector) manifesting itself in the silent suffering of people,” Mr Cooper said.

“People are going without respite services, addiction services, counselling. Unless money is put back in they simply won’t be seen.”

Mr Cooper noted that poor pay in the sector had led to sky-high levels of staff attrition at publicly funded bodies such as addiction services.

“In Ireland, one in three people who deliver social or health services works for a State-funded charity organisation, and that is where we are calling for the Government to put back the funding,” he said.

“Turnover and vacancies are increasingly forcing organisations to reduce hours and cancel services because they lack the staff to deliver them,” he noted, adding that the situation additionally risks the “burnout” of existing staff.

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Asked whether it was a case of people being made martyrs to the issue of pay inequality, Mr Cooper said: “It’s more than that. We live in a 21st-century  republic, we know the Government has put its own arbitrary cap of 6% on public pay increases, yet there are no shortage of resources in the country, so this shouldn’t be happening.”

It’s understood, meanwhile, that public sector union Forsa, Siptu, and the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation have all begun balloting their members ahead of a potential strike within the sector in advance of the budget.

The results of that ballot are unlikely to be made public until closer to the weekend.