In May, Care Sector Organiser Liz Cloherty presented the harrowing results of the Nursing Home Workers Survey 2025 to the Minister of State for Older People and Housing, Kieran O’ Donnell, at Leinster House.
In attendance were the Head of Strategic Organising and Campaigning Darragh O’Connor, Health Care Assistant and National Executive Council member Anne Marie Tibby and Health Care Assistant Martha Buckley.
The demands set to the Minister were clear:
- Deliver safe staffing levels for all healthcare workers
- Provide a sectoral bargaining mechanism for SIPTU and employers to negotiate pay for all Health Care Assistants working in the private and voluntary sector
- Professionalise and regulate the HCA occupation
“We met with Minister O’Donnell to set out the ongoing crisis in the Private and Voluntary Nursing home Sector,” Cloherty said.
“This meeting gave us the opportunity to present the real-life experience of our members who work in this area, and we called for an end of poverty pay to HCAs. We also pressed upon the Minister for the urgency of a safe staffing policy for all healthcare workers.”
She added: “We were clear: This crisis has arisen from Government effectively outsourcing the care of our elderly to a for-profit sector primarily concerned with increasing profits and the devastating impact this has had on our most vulnerable citizens.”
It followed a launch of the survey to politicians, journalists, and healthcare professionals earlier in the month. The results of the survey found that a staffing crisis is undermining the quality of care for nursing home residents.
Buckley also attended the presentation in Dublin where she shared her firsthand experience working over 20 years in a long-term care facility in Co. Cork.
The report was based on the views of over 700 nursing home staff in both the public and private sectors.
“The Department of Health’s Strategic Workforce Advisory Group Report, published in September 2022, clearly recommended the need to establish a mechanism to agree on pay and pensions for Home Support Workers and HCAs in the private sector,” Cloherty said.
“The Government committed to this process. We called on the Minister to urgently deliver on this recommendation and address the crisis in care, where poverty pay continues to lead to chronic understaffing of services.”
She added: “This inevitably compromises safe patient care. Workers have waited long enough, and our elderly citizens deserve more.”