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Departmental Staff

Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 3 November 2020

Tuesday, 3 November 2020

Questions (1, 2, 3)

Alan Kelly

Question:

1. Deputy Alan Kelly asked the Taoiseach the number of additional staff recruited or seconded to his Department to assist with the response to the Covid-19 pandemic. [31301/20]

View answer

Richard Boyd Barrett

Question:

2. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Taoiseach the number of additional staff recruited or seconded to his Department to assist with the response to the Covid-19 pandemic. [33222/20]

View answer

Mick Barry

Question:

3. Deputy Mick Barry asked the Taoiseach the number of additional staff recruited or seconded to his Department to assist with the response to the Covid-19 pandemic. [33500/20]

View answer

Oral answers (8 contributions)

I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 to 3, inclusive, together. My Department continues to play a central role in co-ordinating the State's response to the Covid-19 pandemic. To date this work has been carried out from within my existing staff cohort, although this has involved significant reallocation and re-prioritisation of work within the Department.

This work is co-ordinated through the Cabinet committee on Covid-19 and the associated senior officials' group established to assess the social and economic impacts of the potential spread of Covid-19 and oversee the cross-government response, which includes communicating public information. However, within my Department, staff from every division contribute strongly to the work on Covid-19, including staff in the social policy and public service reform division; the economic division; the Government Information Service; the European Union, international and Northern Ireland division; and the protocol and corporate support services.

In March of this year, a team of approximately 20 staff of my Department who were not directly involved in the work on Covid-19 were temporarily assigned to assist with HSE contact tracing in Dublin. My Department also continues to deliver a range of other core functions and critical business, including supporting the executive functions of the Taoiseach and Government and advancing Government's priorities and policy development through the Cabinet committee structure, and planning for the future with regard to Ireland's economy, Brexit, climate change and the work of the new shared island unit. The Department's structure and resourcing levels will continue to be reviewed in light of the work assigned to the Department.

The Estimates for the Department of the Taoiseach provide for an increase of €1.2 million for salaries. That is quite a substantial amount of money so the Taoiseach might outline what this increase is for. Will he break it down for us? I am sure he has the detail. A large number of extra special advisers have been added in the Department. We have been down this road before with regard to the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the leader of the Green Party. What proportion of that €1.2 million relates to these new special advisers? What proportion relates to other things? I ask the Taoiseach to break that down for us.

With regard to the pandemic, will the Taoiseach outline what expertise or additional staffing has been acquired by his Department to assist in dealing with Covid. In layman's terms, I am asking whether experts have been brought in to help.

We have answered that question.

The Taoiseach might provide detail on all of those. In written replies, the Taoiseach has said that the increased spending will continue throughout the whole-of-government response to Covid-19, including in the area of communicating public information. The advertising spend of the Department of the Taoiseach has increased by millions of euro. Are there extra people to deal with that? If so, what are they doing? Have any experts in this area been hired? The spend on advertising seems to be mostly at a national level. I and others have asked the Taoiseach to reconsider this approach and to channel this spend through local newspapers and radio stations, where it would have a bigger impact, particularly across different age groups. The Taoiseach might consider that in the allocation of his Department's spend on advertising and communications in respect of Covid-19. I would appreciate it if he would respond on that point.

I will ask a question on a topical matter. With regard to those who have been brought in as advisers, has protocol been renewed with regard to how they manage documentation and emails and ensure that everything goes through official channels? Has anything changed or have any instructions been given in the Department of the Taoiseach as a result of the controversy about which we have all been speaking over the last five days?

Are any of the additional staff brought in to deal with Covid-19 addressing the issue of the recruitment of front-line workers necessary to deal with the crisis or the issue of the conditions and pay such workers have to accept? I have raised this matter with the Taoiseach a few times but the more I raise it, the more shocking and extensive are the emails and contacts I get from people. For example, a number of weeks ago I raised the widespread issuing of zero-hour contracts to contact tracers by CPL. I have got a slew of emails since I highlighted that scandal, which was apparently a mistake although I will tell the Taoiseach in a minute why it was not.

I will give the Taoiseach a flavour of what I have been told by the people who are becoming contact tracers, nearly all of whom are science graduates, it is important to say. The issues they have include not being told if they were to be paid for training, which had so far taken 11 hours for one person when they contacted me; being asked to work before being issued contracts; being treated as if in employment while without pay or contracts; being directed to spend their own time practising and learning at home; being given zero-hour contracts; a lack of a human resources presence or anyone to whom to address queries; poor pay at €24,000 per annum; and a lack of sick pay and supports despite the potential for mental health issues for contact tracers highlighted by the training. These are taken from one email from one person.

I also get emails from people who work in testing who are also on zero-hour contracts. All the phrases that were in the mistaken contract are also in contracts issued to people working as medical scientists in laboratories who have been carrying out testing since March. These are also highly qualified people who are on the most rubbish contracts one could imagine. I have also been contacted by other medical scientists telling me that they are applying for jobs but cannot get them at a time when we are saying that such people are needed in the laboratories. They are having to sign on for social welfare even though the testing system was unable to function for two weekends because there was not enough staff. Despite this, qualified people looking for these jobs cannot get them.

There is also the matter of student nurses, to which the response has been most unbelievable. I brought up with the Taoiseach a couple of weeks ago the matter of student nurses not being paid for working on the front line in hospitals. Does the Taoiseach know how many people watched the video of our engagement on that matter? It was 250,000. There were a slew of comments thanking God that somebody had raised these student nurses' plight because they are working for nothing. This is how we are treating those on the front line. This is how we are addressing the issue of building up the permanent capacity we need to deal with Covid-19.

They have rubbish contracts and student nurses are being exploited, and we are not even employing qualified people who are desperate to work in the testing and tracing area.

What is going on? Is there any sense of awareness of these matters in the Taoiseach's Department or the Cabinet subgroup? Will the Taoiseach address this as a matter of urgency? I do not see how we can deal with Covid-19 with such a state of affairs.

Do any of the additional staff in the Department have a special focus on vacancies in front-line services? There are currently more than 100 key promotional front-line nursing and midwifery posts vacant in Cork city alone. There are a further 50 staff nursing vacancies in Cork University Hospital alone. To use a phrase that has been bandied about this week, that is not best practice at the best of times and certainly not in the middle of a pandemic.

We have a bureaucratic centralisation of recruitment within the HSE and that is a big factor in the problem. The common-sense solution is for the directors of nursing and midwifery in hospitals to be given the power to recruit where it is necessary on the ground. The questions that arise are when the 150 posts will be filled and whether the Government is prepared to delegate power to the directors of nursing in that regard.

I ask about Covid staffing in the context of a vaccine if, as we all hope, we have a vaccine in the new year. It will take many staff to administer the vaccine and not everyone is qualified to administer such a vaccine. A person must be a nurse or a pharmacist with certain qualifications, for example. There will be an incredible level of demand for it, so surely the Taoiseach does not envisage that it could be administered on the basis of current staffing levels. Special provisions and recruitment will need to be put in place. Has the Government begun to put in place options for that? It is very important that the administration of the vaccine is done through the public health system. We cannot have a position where the administration of the vaccine is less than 100% of what it could and should be through the public health system while private operators charge for vaccines. Will the Taoiseach comment on that?

There are three matters. I also raise the matter of student nurses. It is not so long ago we were praising all and sundry on the front line and calling them heroes without capes, which is quite correct. This is a terrible abuse of young professionals, and as Deputy Boyd Barrett has said, the sheer unfairness of their treatment is felt very keenly. Will the Taoiseach intervene and what will he do about it?

There has been evidence of zero-hour contracts being issued. CPL is the recruitment agency named, but if it or any other recruitment agency is engaging in that kind of sharp practice and issuing poor contracts that fall short of what the Taoiseach, as Head of the Government, expects, what will he do about it? Has there been an intervention?

On the matter of testing and tracing staff, we know there are 581 staff working on routine contact tracing. We know 214 of these are seconded from within the HSE and will have to return to their contracted positions. We have confirmation that the HSE is targeting a total complement of 800 contact tracers by the end of the year. It is pure madness that the recruitment campaign was not revved up during the summer months and it only began in August and got serious in September. We have raised this matter endlessly with the Taoiseach because it is a critical ingredient in keeping ahead of this virus and allowing society to function to some acceptable level. Where are we now in the recruitment of 800 contact tracers? By the way, we will need more, but we should start with the 800.

To start with Deputy Kelly's questions, the Department of the Taoiseach has not brought in additional staff to deal with Covid-19, as I stated in my reply. It has reprioritised and reallocated work within the Department, as senior members of the Department have been dealing with it on a consistent basis since the outbreak of the pandemic early in the year. The judgment call was that it was better to have senior members of the Department and officials dealing with this matter rather than recruiting freshly into the Department. There is a requirement for experience and co-ordination in the wider Civil Service effort, working with the Department of Health and through the Covid co-ordination Cabinet subcommittee.

There has been fairly extensive work by the officials and I put on the record of the House that, despite all the argy-bargy, we need to reflect from time to time on the extraordinary work that senior public servants have put into the management of Covid-19 on behalf of this country. It speaks to the importance of a strong, highly resourced and high-calibre public service to deal and intervene as a State when something of the order of this global pandemic arises.

I can give Deputies a breakdown later of the posts in the different divisions of the Department. On the wider issue of staffing and public service pay in general, obviously the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform plays a stronger role there. Deputies Boyd Barrett and Barry spoke about how the HSE recruits staff. Since the new Government took office at the end of June, I have been constantly in touch with the HSE, and from the get-go I have been working on the idea of a separate workforce for contact tracing and testing. The chief executive of the HSE and the Minister for Health have been pushing very strongly for this and we have one of the highest rates and volumes of testing in Europe. Denmark is ahead of us when it comes countries of more than 2 million people. The contact tracing side is improving, and while extensive, can be more extensive and we will work on it.

The vaccine will be a major logistical exercise and work is already under way on that. I said on previous occasions in the House that the European Union Commission has signed three agreements so far with Oxford-AstraZeneca, Janssen and Sanofi, and GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals. They are exploring the options and I hope they will be in a position to sign off with three other companies, so that by the end of the year, we might have some indication as to the feasibility of those vaccine research projects and when we will have a vaccine ready. It will take some long period in 2021 before it can be rolled out. It will be a major logistical exercise in itself.

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