There will be no extension of the special pay scheme for healthcare workers suffering from long covid, the health minister has said.<\/p>\n
Two Cork nurses have told The Echo that they will struggle to pay their mortgages if the scheme is stopped as planned.<\/p>\n
The healthcare workers, who contracted covid while working during the pandemic recently told The Echo they were hoping for a \u2018Christmas miracle\u2019.<\/p>\n
Ireland and Greece are the only two EU countries who do not recognise long covid contracted during work as an occupational injury, and instead staff have been on a special pay scheme which has been extended several times. However, it is due to end on December 31 this year.<\/p>\n
The Oireachtas Health Committee wrote to the minister for health to ask her to extend the long covid scheme for healthcare workers for six months while the issue of occupational injury was examined.<\/p>\n
Chair of the committee and Cork Social Democrats TD P\u00e1draig Rice said:\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n \u201cLast week, the Taoiseach said a resolution had to be found. Instead, all these workers have gotten is a cold-hearted response from the Government on Christmas week.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
Minister for health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, said in her response: \u201cThe scheme has already been extended several times. The Labour Court recommended a final extension in June 2025, which means the scheme will now run until December 31, 2025.<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation have been clear that there will be no further extension to the scheme.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
She said that staff who remain unfit to return to work will move seamlessly into the Public Service Sick Leave Scheme, under which they will receive full pay for three months, followed by half-pay for three months.<\/p>\n
She added that they also have the option to apply for Temporary Rehabilitative Remuneration for up to 547 days, and that there will be \u201creasonable accommodations to assist staff returning to work, including modified duties or adjusted work patterns while rehabilitating\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Rice\u2019s party colleague in East Cork, Liam Quaide, described the response as \u201ccallous and emotionally detached\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said it was: \u201cA disgraceful and miserly abdication of responsibility for these workers, many of whom were like cannon fodder in the terrible aftermath of the \u2018Meaningful Christmas\u2019 that Fianna F\u00e1il and Fine Gael instigated in 2020\/2021 after ignoring NPHET advice on the need to maintain restrictions of movement.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There will be no extension of the special pay scheme for healthcare workers suffering from long covid, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[275],"tags":[781,64,18,135,475,474,60,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-255706","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-cork-news","9":"tag-covid-19","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-health-care","13":"tag-healthcare","14":"tag-hse","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115801856731065972","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}