Government urged to extend pandemic bonus to private hospital staff

James Cox

The Private Hospitals Association (PHA) has called on the Government to pay the €1,000 tax-free pandemic bonus to all private hospital healthcare workers across Ireland.

The PHA said the payment should be made to private hospital staff "in recognition of the exceptional contribution made by all frontline hospital workers, throughout the Covid-19 pandemic period".

The "failure to date of the Government to recognise the contribution of frontline healthcare workers in 18 private hospitals around the country is a deeply regrettable and unjustifiable omission", according to PHA CEO, Jim Daly.

“Despite an announcement from the Government in January this year that frontline healthcare workers will receive a special, once-off tax-free payment of €1,000 in recognition of their work in dangerous and challenging conditions during the pandemic, and for the thousands of lives saved as a result of their efforts - staff in the private hospitals have not to date been afforded any such recognition.

“We must remember the state effectively contracted the capacity within private hospitals at the height of the pandemic when capacity in the public hospitals was under enormous strain and frontline healthcare workers in private hospitals provided time critical surgical and medical care to public patients on behalf of the HSE. The private hospital sector proved to be the vital safety net that kept the public system functioning across Ireland and through the darkest hours of the pandemic."

Mr Daly said he has made his disappointment known directly to the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly and requested confirmation on when staff, "who went above and beyond the call of duty in within the country’s private hospitals", could expect to "receive the same token of appreciation that was rightly afforded to their colleagues in the public hospital system and those within private sector nursing homes and hospices affected by Covid-19".

Mr Daly added: “The private hospitals were very willing to assist the state in its hour of need and will do so again if required. The Government need to recognise that a nurse, a porter, or any person who left home to work in a hospital during the Covid pandemic, deserves the promised token of appreciation irrespective of whether this was in a private or public setting.

"The fact the state effectively took over the private hospitals at the height of the pandemic to ensure capacity and a functioning health system only adds further credence to this expectation."