Committee urges minister to extend payment scheme for healthcare workers with long covid

Many of the 159 workers became sick during the so-called ‘meaningful Christmas’ in December 2020, when many pandemic-era social restrictions were briefly relaxed, leading to a massive spike in infections

The  healthcare workers also argue that long covid be treated as an occupational hazard for their profession, as it is in several other European countries. File photo: Alamy/PA

A payment scheme for healthcare workers suffering from long covid should be extended for six months, the Dáil has heard.

Some 159 workers nationwide have received the Special Leave with Pay scheme since contracting long covid, with many first becoming sick during the so-called ‘meaningful Christmas’ in December 2020, when many pandemic-era social restrictions were briefly relaxed, leading to a massive spike in infections.

Those healthcare workers have argued that, given they became ill while working on the frontlines of the Government’s response to the disease, and given they are still unfit to work, their pay scheme should be made permanent. 

They also argue that long covid be treated as an occupational hazard for their profession, as it is in several other European countries. However, while the scheme has been extended several times, it is currently set to lapse on December 31.

Social Democrats TD and chair of the Oireachtas Health Committee, Padraig Rice, called on Taoiseach Micheál Martin to intervene and said the committee had agreed to write to health minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill “to ask her to extend the scheme for six months to allow the Department of Social Protection to introduce an occupational injury scheme, as other EU countries have done”.

“This scheme is in place for a very small group of healthcare workers, the majority of them women, many who got badly infected while at work at the height of the pandemic, while the rest of us were at home, long before PPE and vaccines,” Mr Rice said.

Responding, the Taoiseach said he would “talk to the minister for health and other ministers and see what’s possible”. Mr Rice subsequently said it would be “unconscionable for the State to abandon these workers given their bravery and sacrifice”.

Last October, the Irish Nurses & Midwives Organisation (INMO) wrote to the Health Committee requesting a public session to air the workers’ stories, with that committee last month proposing a joint such session between itself and the Social Protection Committee.

However, head of the Social Protection Committee John Paul O’Shea noted that no hearing was possible before the members had been briefed on the matter by the Department of Social Protection itself.

What's your view on this issue?

You can tell us here

A query to the health minister asking if her department had engaged with the Department of Social Protection in search of a solution to the issue, and if she considers shutting the scheme as justifiable given the workers’ ongoing medical needs, was not directly replied to but was instead referred back to the Department of Health.

On Tuesday, further education junior minister Marian Harkin told Social Democrats TD for Cork East Liam Quaide — who had advocated for the workers at length — in the Dáil that “while some EU countries recognise covid-19 as an occupational illness, this applied to covid-19 itself, not long covid”, adding that “it has been determined that covid-19 does not meet the criteria required for recognition under the Social Health Care Act”.

Mr Quaide replied that the response was “miserly and utterly callous” and “completely out of touch with the reality of these workers’ circumstances”.