One aspect of a changing world is a population that is getting older. That means we need more people caring for the people who get older and who are less mobile and have higher levels of disability and so on. That means the people who provide that care need to be treated properly if we are going to get the people to do the work, the need for which is expanding and is going to expand as the population of this country gets older. However, we do not, to a very large extent, treat them well. I have met quite a lot of people over the past couple of weeks. The workers at North Side Home Care Services are on strike. Once upon a time, they had parity with those who were directly employed by the HSE. They were at the same level as healthcare assistants. That parity was broken and has never been restored for considerable numbers of people, despite an impression being conveyed that a deal was done when some people, those in section 39 organisations, got restoration. There was a whole group of people - and I am only getting my head around this - who were considered out of scope, whatever that means. It meant they did not get pay restoration. They are getting paid poverty wages while doing the same work as people who are employed directly by the HSE and get relatively decent wages compared to them. It is not just North Side Home Care Services workers who are in this situation and are on strike. I met a load of others. There are thousands of people doing this work. They are doing very difficulty work and are asking themselves why on earth they would continue to do the job when they are getting paid such a miserable level of pay and did not get pay restoration. They think it is because a lot of these so-called not-for-profit care companies are a stepping stone towards the privatisation of these services. You start at the same level as directly employed healthcare assistants, with parity and so on, and end up on poverty pay working for a company where there is no accountability and the work is outsourced and privatised. That is a big part of a changing world. It is not as high flying as digital and all that stuff but is an important part of our future, given our ageing population. We need to start to treat those workers properly. It begins with them being returned to the pay parity they enjoyed before austerity, which, let us not forget, was imposed after Fianna Fáil drove us over a cliff.

Sentiment score: 0.08