Covid-19 Pandemic Supports
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-16
============================================================

Liam Quaide (SD), Cork East

It is despairing to receive that response. It is so completely out of touch with the reality of these workers' circumstances. There is no security that comes from being on standard sick leave. That is just a pathway to medical retirement. There is no rationale given as to why this basic financial support is being ripped away at this arbitrary cut-off date. The health condition of these workers has not changed. As social protection Minister in the previous Government, Heather Humphreys, according to reports from 2024, was vigorously opposed to making Covid an occupational illness, saying it would be impossible to determine whether someone had contracted the virus in the workplace. This was despite the fact that most European countries had done so, with the exception of Greece and Ireland, and despite the glaring contradiction of providing special Covid leave with pay to the cohort of workers I am speaking of on the basis that they contracted the virus at work. It was the then Minister's party leader at the time, Leo Varadkar, who dispensed with public health advice, opening the floodgates on the virus circulating through the community and infiltrating healthcare settings to an overwhelming degree in those dark weeks of late December 2020 and early January 2021. These workers are now living with the lasting impact of that.
There is no doubt that these workers contracted Covid in the workplace. They were caught up in clear outbreaks in healthcare settings while the rest of the country’s workers for the most part were able to work from home. There is a clear contradiction in the Government’s recognition of long Covid as occupationally acquired, demonstrated in its granting of special Covid leave with pay to date and its crude termination of that scheme at an arbitrary cut-off date of 31 December as these workers continue to experience significant disability arising from that condition.
It was utterly callous, miserly and incoherent of Heather Humphreys to deprive these workers of a basic level of financial security as she sailed off into retirement on a gold-plated pension. Her comments are part of an overall pattern of gaslighting that these workers have experienced in occupational health departments, as well as with some medical practitioners and now, unfortunately, this Government. It looks from this response like we cannot expect any degree of compassion or reason on this issue from the Minister of State's colleagues. I implore her to take this back to the Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill. There is no justification for what is being done here.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:28+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-16