(Dublin West): I speak on behalf of a substantial group of people, about 12,000 in all, who must rank as the most exploited section of workers in this State. A majority, if not all of them, are female workers. I refer to home helps employed by health boards. In all health boards, without exception, pay levels for home helps are scandalously inadequate. The Southern Health Board, however, pays the most shameful rates of all. That health board now pays its home helps £2 an hour, up a glorious 30p from the £1.70 of one year ago. Even that epitome of exploitation, the multinational hamburger peddlers McDonalds, who are infamous for their low rates of pay, would blush at these rates.
Home helps provide an essential service to people in acute need in a great diversity of ways, yet along with exploitation wages, they receive no holiday pay and no sick leave. Sometimes, they have to travel miles at their own expense to their patients. Home helps deal with patients who would otherwise be institutionalised. Many of the people they care for are sick and disabled or elderly and enfeebled. One example was drawn to my attention of a young woman with small children who was seriously ill. Her husband goes to work for a low wage. The home help gets the children out to school and then does the washing and cleaning. She cares for the ill woman but if that patient is taken into hospital for a period the home help receives no pay. That leaves her and the family in a situation of emotional trauma.
Families and home helps get close to each other emotionally. Thus, the home help is put under emotional blackmail by this scheme to work for free because she does not want to see the family suffering even more. Home helps are homemakers, cooks, dishwashers, child-minders, nurses, counsellors and much more. All that for £2 an hour.
I regret that the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Cowen, who was in the House a few minutes ago did not remain to deal with this Adjournment matter. A year ago in the House, he described the home help service as "a community based good neighbour scheme which attracts people primarily motivated by the desire to engage in community service".
This trick was used for generations to blackmail general nurses. They were called angels of mercy who were always to be there when needed, but they were grievously exploited. They are still angels of mercy but now they are recognised as crucial professional workers who are beginning to receive pay rates accordingly.
Like nurses, home helps are not an optional extra. They are a crucially necessary part of health care, which is not something that can be left to chance, as the Minister seems to think. If home helps were not there, the institutional care they provide would still be necessary and would be massively more expensive, thus making the hospital waiting list crisis far worse.
I extend my solidarity to home helps around the country, particularly in the Southern Health Board region. Home helps as a group, spearheaded by the Cork home helps, have launched and are vigorously pursuing a campaign for just rates of pay, conditions and recognition of the crucial role they play. Public representatives, be they councillors or Deputies, who have gone along with this shameful exploitation should hang their heads in shame. We must end this shameful exploitation by recognising home helps for the crucial service they give and the angels of mercy and the carers they are. They should receive a minimum of £6 per hour and their roles should be fully recognised as an essential component of the health service. I hope the Minister of State will recognise this and begin to put the situation right.
