Unions hoping meeting on Long Covid will produce resolution for frontline health workers
Union officials are hoping a meeting with Taoiseach Micheál Martin on Thursday could lead to a breakthrough regarding support for frontline healthcare staff suffering the effects of Long Covid who are on half pay.The issue has dragged on for several years, with a special payment scheme that had kept those affected on full pay repeatedly extended before it finally ran out at the end of last year.Since then, the staff, many of them nurses and other hospital staff who contracted Covid in the first weeks of the pandemic, have had to avail of ordinary sick leave, which provides full pay for three months and half pay for a further three. From the start of July, anyone still unable to work would have to apply for payments from the Department of Social Protection.About 150 workers were involved and Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation general secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha said the number has not changed significantly despite the financial pressure on some of those affected to return to work.READ MOREDonald Trump’s dinner with the media descends into chaos as gunman storms hotelFormer TD Jim Glennon confirms he wrote character reference for convicted child abuserWho is Cole Tomas Allen, the suspect in the White House correspondents’ dinner shooting?Paul O’Connell: ‘I see little difference between a Limerick rugby player and one from a Dublin private school’Responding to a question from Social Democrats TD Liam Quaide in February, Martin said he accepted the staff in question had contracted the condition while working.He said he would again speak to the Ministers responsible for the issue and payments. The departments involved in previous discussions have included Health, Social Protection and Public Expenditure.Ní Sheaghdha said some of those affected would be among the union side delegation at the meeting. “I think his response to the question that Liam Quaide posed was more positive than any response that we’ve heard from the Minister for Health or from the Minister for Social Protection. And if he’s willing to do something, if he’s willing to have a look at what can be done, we have a lot of schemes that exist in Health that we think are appropriate.”Beyond that, she said, “the country needs to really think about what people who are lower to medium earners do in times like this because they were asked to do the extraordinary. They were asked to go into situations where none of the rest of us were asked to go. And they did it.”
