Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 30 April 2024
126. Deputy Brendan Smith asked the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the measures being implemented by his Department to ensure pay parity for Section 38 and Section 39 organisations’ employees that are providing services on behalf of agencies under the remit of his Department; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [19212/24]
View answerThe Government recognises that the ability of organisations to recruit and retain staff is crucial to the delivery of quality services and the overall sustainability of the sector.
To support the sustainability of services, including the ability of voluntary organisations to recruit and retain staff, the Department and its agencies proactively engaged with a Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) process with unions representing staff in Section 39 disability organisations.
The agreement reached last October delivered a significant increase in funding to these services, amounting to a phased 8% increase in funding for pay for staff in these voluntary organisations. An additional €41m has been made available to the HSE in 2024 to meet the full year cost of this increase for disability service providers.
As part of the agreement, Departments also committed to further talks after future public sector agreements. The recently ratified public sector deal opens the door to such further engagement and the WRC has written to relevant parties with a view to reconvening talks.
The administrative arrangements developed by the HSE to meet the terms of the agreement, are designed to make additional funding available as efficiently as possible to the employer organisations, while also providing for appropriate accountability for expenditure of public monies.
The HSE has contracted dedicated resources to work with employer organisations and set up a portal to expedite payments, so that their staff can be paid the increases funded under the WRC agreement.
Significant interim payments have already been made to qualifying organisations.
As of 29th April the HSE has indicated that, 422 submissions have been received, 30 Section 39 organisations are currently within the payment process, 8 of which have already been paid with the remainder due payment over coming weeks.
