Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 7 November 2023
35. Deputy Pauline Tully asked the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth to detail the effect the HSE recruitment freeze will have on delivering disability services; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48528/23]
Amharc ar fhreagraI ask the Minister to detail the effect the HSE recruitment freeze will have on delivering disability services and to make a statement on the matter.
I thank the Deputy for raising this important question. The Department, along with the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, has engaged with the HSE to ensure the recruitment pause for certain grades does not unduly affect the provision of existing disability services. On the day we launched the roadmap, the Minister and I met Bernard Gloster, Bernard O'Regan and David Walsh. The whole purpose of the meeting was to outline that we were very concerned about what effect the pause would have on disability services. We clearly asked them if we could get the clarity the Deputy is seeking in order that a newly worded letter would go out to the section 39 organisations, the section 38 organisations and the HSE. Only this evening we got clarification that disability services will not be impacted. Bernard Gloster is communicating directly to the section 38 organisations, as we speak, the HSE and the section 38 organisations. That will mean the medical grade staff - namely, grades 1012 and 1538 - along with the domestic staff grade, the drivers grade, the service co-ordinator, area manager grades, the family support workers, the day service supervisor grades, the care assistant grades, the social care workers and the personal assistants will not be impacted whatsoever. In fact, where organisations need to fill posts one for one, they will absolutely be able to continue to do that. That is a real, clear signal that disability and the HSE works to the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, under the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth and the HSE is also answerable at the same time to the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly. Very clearly this evening, Bernard Gloster gave the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, and I assurances that disability services will not be impacted by the pause.
I thank the Minister of State for that reply because it is very welcome. Only today I was talking to someone from a section 38 organisation that provides residential, respite and day services. They have already met their board to curtail their services in the coming weeks. The services will still be curtailed because the organisation was in the middle of a recruitment process a number of weeks ago with 60 staff positions to fill. They were not healthcare positions, but care assistant positions, which were initially under the recruitment pause. Those interviews and recruitment processes were paused. The organisation will welcome the news the Minister of State has given us here, but it is still going to mean it will take the organisations a number of months to go back and fill those positions because many of the people the organisation was in the process of recruiting will be gone to other positions.
That is ridiculous.
It is a month. People are not going to hang around for a job they do not know is going to materialise, or did not know would until today. It was paused on 13 October, so services are going to be affected. Fortunately, this will be and can be addressed, but can agency staff be taken on in the meantime?
I appreciate exactly where providers are coming from and the uncertainty that correspondence caused, but I do not accept it will take months upon months for staff organisations were interviewing to be taken on for posts. Disability services is probably one of the only services across the HSE that is recruiting at this moment in time and it is doing so across all the posts I laid out for the Deputy. To be honest with her, we have worked as speedily as we could and to be fair to Bernard Gloster, he has responded as quickly he could. He knew this question was here this evening, so I welcome his pragmatism in responding to us. The letter will issue in the morning, so I ask providers to take up tools as speedily as they put them down when they got word there was a pause.
I thank the Minister of State. The organisations will do so, but what they were saying was they had people in the process of being recruited and they do not think those people are still going to be there. They hope they will, and if they are then the organisations will take them on, but they said people will leave, because they have to. Given the demands of paying for the cost of living and so on, people are going to move on to something else unless they are sure the job is going to come up.
Health and social care professionals were exempted from the recruitment pause, but they cannot be recruited for love nor money anyway. We know that within even the children's disability network teams, CDNTs. I have a question on those teams because 41 of the 91 are HSE-run and I think 24 are section 38 organisations as well. Are they affected in any way by the recruitment pause across any of the grades, including management, administration staff and so on? All the staff are very important.
I reassure the Deputy that, as David Walsh said, this should ideally encompass residential, respite, personal assistance day services and CDNTs. He also said it would be limited to roles to which he referred. The entire disability service, be it respite, residential, personal assistance day services or CDNTs, the HSE and section 38 and section 39 organisations will continue to recruit. This is a real recognition that disability services need to recruit. There are hundreds of posts unfilled that I hope we will be able to attract staff to in order to reduce the deficit. I acknowledge that there is a serious deficit in our CDNTs. That is why, as a matter of priority, could not have a pause in this regard.
