Dáil Éireann Debate, Monday - 11 September 2023
1546. Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív asked the Minister for Health the number of workers who have received the Covid bonus of €1,000; the cost of the scheme to date; the number of applications still on hand to be processed; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37383/23]
View answerTo recognise their unique role during the pandemic, the Government last year announced a COVID-19 recognition payment for eligible frontline healthcare staff in the HSE, Section 38 organisations, and certain other specific cohorts as follows:
1. Private Sector Nursing Homes and Hospices (e.g. Private, Voluntary, Section 39 etc.);
2. Eligible staff working on-site in Section 39 long-term residential care facilities for people with disabilities;
3. Agency roles working in the HSE;
4. Health Care Support Assistants (also known as home help / home care / home support) contracted to the HSE;
5. Members of the Defence Forces redeployed to work in frontline Covid-19 exposed environments in the HSE;
6. Paramedics employed by Dublin Fire Brigade to deliver services on behalf of the HSE.
For the public health service, rollout is complete, with over 90,000 HSE staff and over 53,000 Section 38 organisations' staff paid approx €136m in total.
For eligible Defence and Dublin Fire Brigade staff, on 1/11/22 the Department of Health transferred funding to the Department of Defence (€1.265m) and Dublin City Council (€0.84m) to cover payments in respect of over 2000 staff. Payment of these staff is a matter for those bodies but is understood to be complete.
Regarding cohorts 1-4 above, the HSE and an external contractor, KOSI Corp, are currently progressing the rollout to these eligible staff. The HSE can turn around these payments very quickly, and as of 22nd August, funding has been made available to 734 organisations out of 751 that have applied, with 76,570 staff have been paid €66.6m through 734 Employers.
Furthermore KOSI have an on-line Portal in place for individual employees of companies who have ceased trading and 163 of the total staff paid have been paid this way with individual claims still being received
As there are still some outstanding claims being processed and supplementary claims are still being received with most employers having submitted more than one claim it is not possible to assess how many eligible staff remain to be paid, until all required data is received from relevant employers.
