Taoiseach commits to meeting long covid survivors over pay issue

 Taoiseach  Micheál Martin said he will 'engage with the ministers responsible again', but added there are 'complexities and consequences' on the issue. Picture: Leah Farrell/RollingNews.ie

Taoiseach Micheál Martin has committed to meeting survivors of long covid who had their payments removed last Christmas and said he will revisit the issue once more with the Department of Health.

Some 159 healthcare workers around the country lost access to the special leave with pay scheme on December 31, which had allowed them to be in receipt of full pay since contracting long covid. 

From January 1, the workers were brought on to a general sick leave scheme encompassing full pay for three months, before moving to half pay for a further three.

The healthcare workers had argued that they became ill while working on the frontlines of the government’s response to the pandemic, many of them during the so-called “meaningful Christmas” of 2020, and given they are still unfit to work, their pay scheme should have been made permanent.

They further argued that long covid should be treated in Ireland as an occupational hazard for a medical profession, as it is in several other European countries.

While the special leave with pay scheme had been extended several times after its inception, it finally lapsed on December 31.

Open to a meeting

Asked by Social Democrats TD Liam Quaide in the Dáil, a long-term advocate for the long covid workers, if he would be open to meeting the group anew to see how the loss of their payment had affected them, the Taoiseach said he would be “open” to doing so, noting he had met them once last June.

“I will engage with the ministers responsible again,” Mr Martin said, while adding there are “complexities around consequences” around the issue.

“But I get that the issue is the capacity of people with long covid to participate in the workforce, and the fact that it was without question in my view contracted on the hospital site, I don’t dispute that.

“There’s no question that many healthcare professionals contracted [covid] onsite in the hospitals and while one can never be totally definitive on that, it’s a fair, plausible scenario that many did — particularly in the earlier phase when we had lockdowns and so on like that and particular variants were more infectious than others. So I will revisit this.”

Mr Quaide said of the Taoiseach’s response that he was “encouraged and frankly surprised” by the Taoiseach’s “commitment to meet this group of healthcare workers again, and to work with his ministerial colleagues on the issue”.

“A just resolution would involve minimal cost to the State, yet would make a profound difference to the financial security and well-being of these workers,” he said.