About 150 frontline healthcare workers who developed Long Covid after initially contracting the virus while at work are set to have their full sick pay restored while a review of their cases is carried out.
The move follows a meeting between Taoiseach Micheál Martin and unions representing the staff, many of whom became ill in the early days of the pandemic when protective clothing was in short supply and protocols for dealing with cases in hospital settings were still being developed.
A Special Leave Scheme which kept the workers, mainly nurses, on full pay had been discontinued at the end of last year when they transferred to ordinary sick pay and having received that for three months, many had had it confirmed in recent days they were to receive half pay for April.
That would have continued until June, after which the expectation had been that they would need to apply to the Department of Social Protection for further payments.
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Instead, Martin is understood to have suggested to representatives from Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), Siptu and Fórsa on Thursday morning that the staff will be able to avail of the HSE’s Critical Illness Protocol which would entitle them to a further three months’ on full pay. The time is intended to allow for a further review of their positions.
The Taoiseach told the meeting he has instructed HSE management to use their discretion to apply the protocol. He also gave a commitment to engage with the Department of Health and the HSE during the time period covered by the protocol.
[ Healthcare workers with Long Covid feel ‘abandoned’ as special payment endsOpens in new window ]
The “unions felt the meeting was positive and welcome the commitment to reviewing the application of the Critical Illness Protocol to allow further engagement on the substantive issue,” they said in a statement afterwards.
“Unions are looking forward to further positive engagement with the Taoiseach, the Health Service Executive and the Department of Health.”
Before the meeting, INMO general secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha said there were a number of HSE schemes that provided for long-term support to staff who had become ill during the course of their work and Long Covid should be treated in the same way.
The staff, she said, should not be penalised for having gone to work at a time when that work was considered to come with high risks attached.
“They were asked to go into situations where none of the rest of us were asked to go,” she said. “And they did it.”
Liam Quaide, a Social Democrats TD, who has raised the case of the workers a number of times in the Dáil welcomed the outcome of the meeting and said the “Government now has an opportunity to do the right thing and provide financial security to a small group of workers who stepped up when the country needed them most.”
