There are about 20 Northside Home Care healthcare assistants in the Gallery. These workers are on strike today. Some of them have worked for 25 years and are only paid €15.04 an hour. Others are on minimum wage. They get approximately 30% less than others doing the same job. They provide vital care for about 500 people on a daily basis. The reason for this ultimately is the HSE has arbitrarily excluded them from being treated as section 39 workers. When this was raised with the Taoiseach when they were on strike in January, he said he would "talk to the Minister and the HSE, to see if the issue can be satisfactorily resolved, averting any necessity for further industrial action". Yet here we are, back again. Will the Taoiseach ask the Minister for Health to meet with these workers and instruct the HSE to treat them properly, give them pay parity and treat them as section 39 workers?

Sentiment score: 0.17