Public Sector Pay
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
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Joe Cooney (FG), Clare

The consequences of a failure to deliver a fully funded package for section 39 staff and organisations will, unfortunately, fall on the vulnerable people who rely on them. These organisations operate on a tight service level agreement with the HSE. Pay parity for staff must be supported by a ring-fenced, fully funded package from Government that includes the full cost to their employers, which is important. Anything less will move this crisis from staff and organisations directly onto families, unfortunately. Organisations funded under section 39 already find it difficult to compete with HSE and section 38 pay scales. This will compound the existing recruitment and retention difficulties resulting in increased staffing shortages, greater reliance on agency staff and a higher risk to service delivery. Organisations may be unable to adequately support their existing staff or meet the needs of current service users and their families. We need to fix this issue properly, once and for all.

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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/2026-09-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-17