Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-18
============================================================

Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

I acknowledge the very significant contribution healthcare assistants make to our health system. The difficulty here is there was a Workplace Relations Commission hearing on 10 March last year between ICTU unions and the relevant Departments. An agreement was reached on pay and conditions but that applied to section 39 organisations under the health Acts, section 56 of the Child and Family Agency Act 2013, section 10 of the housing Act and section 40 of the Domestic, Sexual, and Gender-Based Violence Agency Act 2023. It applied to all bodies falling within those. There are many healthcare assistant work and homecare services, such as the Northside Home Care Service, which are funded through a separate, competitive, tendering process. That is a separate mechanism to the funding of section 39 organisations. The HSE says those tender processes and services commissioned by those tender processes are governed by separate contractual arrangements with providers. There is an issue there. It is not easily resolved. I will talk to the Minister. There is a one-day stoppage. We do not want industrial action taking place. I appreciate that people feel they need to do it. I will talk to the Minister again and see what we can do about it.

---

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/2026-02-18/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:39+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-18