War of words over disability funding

SIPTU has hit out at disability rights campaigner Eamon Walsh for comments the latter made in this paper last week.

Mr Walsh had claimed that the Brothers of Charity Galway is being forced to divert funds away from front-line services in order to pay wage increments.

However, speaking on behalf of the staff, Paul Hardy from SIPTU said that staff pay is not being ‘diverted’ from frontline care, rather “in a disability service, it is frontline care.”

Mr Hardy said “small annual increments for more junior staff” were a fundamental part of the pay scale, which is protected by the Public Service ‘Croke Park’ Agreement.

He said Brothers of Charity Galway staff have had their pay reduced “in line with the public sector and pay the so-called ‘pension levy’ on top of that, and so have lost between ten and 14 per cent of their income, and that is before taking account of other taxes and levies imposed on taxpayers as a whole”.

And, he said, that staff were are also maintaining services with fewer staff.

“Mr Walsh needs to understand too that many of the families of these staff are affected also by private-sector unemployment,” said Hardy.

“We are glad that the Minister for Public Expenditure, Brendan Howlin TD, has rejected similar calls for cuts to increments at national level. Moreover, the independent Labour Court, which was asked to make recommendations after the Brothers of Charity Services in Limerick did cease the payment of increments, was crystal clear that such cuts were not only a breach of Croke Park but of the contracts of employment of staff. Increments are only payable in respect of satisfactory performance.”

Care assistants at the Brothers of Charity Galway reach a maximum salary of €36,680 per annum after 11 years’ satisfactory service, while social care workers reach a maximum salary of €44,300 after ten years’ satisfactory service.

Mr Hardy also said that there is no doubt that the Brothers of Charity are under financial pressure caused by reductions in State funding.

“Although we believe there may be scope for some limited savings away from the frontline, it is a well-run organisation and so there is no doubt that any funding cuts imposed by the Health Service Executive would be likely to mean cuts to the services provided to people with intellectual disabilities and their families.”

The SIPTU Health Services Organiser also said that “it is profoundly disappointing” that Eamon Walsh, a respected campaigner for disability services and a Labour Party representative, “should have fallen for HSE West’s pre-emptive effort to shift the blame for future service cuts from their decisions on funding to the staff of the Brothers of Charity who provide care services of high quality in very difficult circumstances”. 

However, responding to Mr Hardy’s comments, Mr Walsh said that Hope4Disability and their families are “acutely aware” of the pay cuts already endured by the staff of the Brothers of Charity and other disability service providers and the extreme pressure they are under to continue to maintain services with ever decreasing resources. 

“Further, we have not said, nor are we of the opinion, that such staff are not entitled to their negotiated and contracted entitlements to increments; what we do have a difficulty with is the failure of the HSE to include funds to cover these increments in the annual budgets to the service providers.

“This practise essentially represents a further cut on top of the percentage cuts announced to the budgets of service providers. What this means is that diminishing resources are necessarily consumed in meeting increments,” he said.

Mr Walsh added that the problem is “not with the increments themselves but the manner in which they are funded”.

“If disappointment is to be expressed in all of this, might we suggest that the disappointment of those who critically need these services with the leaders of all of the institutions of the State who are responsible for their welfare is indeed most profound,” he said.

Hope4Disability has now called on SIPTU and all unions with members in the services to “actively support service users and their families in their fight to maintain, what is for them, their life supports”.

“Special treatment is not what is been looked for, simply the supports to have a basic secure quality of life as citizens of their country,” said Mr Walsh.