Government called on to ensure pay parity among healthcare workers

By Philip Rooney, The Sligo Champion

A motion before this month’s meeting of Sligo County Council has called on the “Irish Government to award Section 39 workers the same rate of pay as and entitlements as their Section 38 colleagues who deliver the same service.”

The HSE funds a range of service providers under either Section 38 or Section 39 of the Health Act 2004.

Annually the HSE provides funding of approximately €3b to almost 3,000 agencies for the delivery of a range of services. The bulk of this funding, €2.44b goes to serve 44 agencies (known as Section 38 agencies) primarily in the acute hospital and disability sectors.

The employees of agencies that are funded under Section 38 of the Health Act 2004 are classified as public servants. They are subject to the standard salary scales for the health sector as well as having access, in the main to a public service pension scheme. The Central Remedial Clinic, for example, is a Section 38 agency.

The employees of agencies that receive grant-aid from the HSE under Section 39 are not public servants and are not specifically subject to the pay-scales approved for public servants. The employees of such organisations are not included in public service employment numbers. Rehab, for example, is a Section 39 agency.

In his motion before the Council, Cllr Arthur Gibbons said, “It is very unfair that they are treated differently.”

Cllr Gibbons added, “They can put 40 years into a job. It is very wrong. They are taking an awful lot of burden off the HSE. They should be rewarded the same and I will keep bringing it up until the Government sees sense.”