Stephen Donnelly has admitted that the rollout of the €1,000 pandemic bonus to frontline workers has not been perfect, but insisted it is now largely complete.
The Minister for Health appeared before an Oireachtas committee to speak about the revised estimates for public services.
At the start of the meeting the committee’s chair, Sean Crowe, told the Minister it had been raised by several groups that some workers had not yet been paid the bonus.
He said that although it was not clear how many people or which cohorts of workers were left to be paid, the committee had heard it included firefighters and those who administered vaccines at Citywest.
He said that the outstanding payments were “unforgivable”, and that the “goodwill has gone out of the payments” for those who had not yet received them.
The Minister responded that a total of €208 million of tax-free bonuses had been paid to thousands of workers, but admitted there was “a small number” of people who had not yet been paid.
“It is the nature of these things that we don’t tend to hear from the many who have been paid,” he said.
“If we look around the world at similar recognition payments that have been made, Ireland’s recognition payment is very favourable by international standards – €1,000 tax-free to a very wide group of people.”
The committee heard that the HSE has distributed €88 million to 142,250 staff, Section 38 workers have collectively received €52 million, while the Section 39 workers received €67 million.
“So if there are people left who haven’t been paid it, they are local anomalies and there is a mechanism in place, of course, for them to be paid,” he added.
He admitted that it has taken longer for non-public sector workers to be paid, due to caution exercised by the HSE to ensure no overpayment to private bodies.
“I intervened because, as I shared with you chair, and I shared with colleagues my frustration with how long this was taking and what I said to the HSE is ‘ask the organisations to do it on a self-assessment basis and then validate afterwards’.
“And we have to accept that in doing that there will be errors made but then the HSE is going to validate afterwards.”
He said that 727 funding applications had been received and 655 had been processed.
“So there are still some left, but very few in the context of the number of people who are being paid. About 90% of the submissions that came back did have errors in them that the HSE then just needed time to go back and work through with them.”
On the payments to firefighters and other workers, Mr Donnelly said that his understanding was that funding had already been paid to their employers.
“The Dublin Fire Brigade and the prison nurses were the other group that I asked to be included. So the money was sent to those line departments quite some time ago, certainly last year,” he said.
“I haven’t heard anything back about that money not being allocated.”
Dublin Fire Brigade was allocated €1.265 million, and Dublin City Council had been paid €840,000, he said.
“The note I have is the payment of the staff is a matter for the bodies involved, but it’s understood to be substantially complete,” he added.
Sinn Féin TD David Cullinane said that he had heard from cleaning and security staff who have not been paid, and he assumed they would be entitled to the bonus.
Mr Donnelly said that he himself had met with contract cleaning staff at a hospital who had not been paid.
“I assured them that they are in scope, they’re absolutely in scope, and that got processed. So it didn’t roll out perfectly, in that sense,” he said.
The minister said an updated note would be sent to the committee outlining exactly what the criteria are for qualification for the bonus, as well as the progress made to date.
