I appeal to Deputies to stick to the allocated time. I call Deputy Micheál Martin.

Some months ago, I raised in Leaders' Questions the plight facing our hospices, employees in our hospices and indeed other section 39 organisations providing disability services and mental health services among others due to the Government's decision to exclude them from pay restoration agreements. There has been an unfair, cynical and downright dishonest approach to these organisations with regard to this issue. Funding has been deliberately withheld. Obfuscation has been the order of the day. The Minister for Health is now writing to the HSE to ask it to engage with these organisations to seek a greater and deeper understanding of the situation. I put it to the Taoiseach that that is insulting to those organisations and it is a joke. The HSE knows all about these organisations. It knows deeply about the plight that they are in, their financial situation and the issues surrounding pay restoration itself. I put it to the Taoiseach that those in organisations which provide up to 25% of disability services are being treated as second-class citizens while the Government loudly proclaims that it will ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and so on. That sort of hypocrisy drives people in this country mad. Employees who were used to a linkage with HSE pay scales are now treated as second-class citizens while, by the Government's own admission, they provide 25% of disability services. Employees in our hospices, the most cherished and universally lauded of our services, are treated like second-class citizens.

The issue has been to the Labour Court, which has adjudicated on this, saying that a pay linkage with the HSE exists and that where pay had either increased or decreased in the HSE, the pay rates of staff in Milford Care Centre had followed suit. This is a funding issue, not an industrial relations issue. I read in detail the Labour Court adjudication on this. I put it to the Taoiseach that the Government, for some reason, deliberately decided not to include the employees of these organisations within the pay envelope arising from the pay restoration agreements arrived at and, as a result, have put these organisations in deep trouble financially. More importantly, it has resulted in a huge drop in morale and huge recruitment challenges for the organisations themselves. When will the Government do the honest thing and accept that these employees are entitled to linkages with HSE employees and pay the organisations accordingly?

It is important to put on the record that there are more than 2,000 section 39 organisations throughout the State. They provide important disability services. They include many, but not all, of our hospices and provide vital services for our elderly people. A differential in pay has now opened up between staff working for HSE bodies and staff working for these section 39 bodies. That is causing an issue for recruitment in some places. Section 39 bodies are NGOs, charities and companies. They are not part of the public service and therefore the people who work for them are not Government employees or public servants, nor have they ever been. The Deputy will know from having read the Labour Court recommendation that the recommendation falls on the legal employers, which is not the HSE or the State. These bodies are part-funded by means of a block grant. They also raise money in other ways. They range from organisations that get as little as €10,000 from the Government to ones that get millions of euro to provide important services. Some comply with public sector pay rules and some, as we know, have not in the past. That has been a real problem. Some reduced pay in line with pay in the public service and some did not. Almost all had their block grants reduced and almost all have had their block grants increased in recent years. In some cases, they have passed that on to staff in the form of pay restoration and in other cases they have not.

We are dealing with a diverse picture and it seems to me that staff working in these organisations have, in some ways, been caught in the middle, between their employers, the section 39 organisations themselves, the HSE and the Government. While we have been examining this for some weeks now, we still do not know how many people are affected and we do not know what the cost would be to resolve the situation. We have not been able to ascertain that. We want to establish a process whereby we can look at each of these organisations and their staff individually, find out how many people are affected, what it would cost to resolve it and whether, in some cases, block grants were increased but a decision was taken by those organisations not to pass on some of that to their staff in pay restoration in the way section 38 organisations had to.

That is a cop-out. It is unacceptable and dishonest. The HSE has been auditing these organisations year in, year out. There was correspondence from the Labour Court hearing from 14 December 2009 and January 2010 instructing these organisations, at the time of the pay cuts, to align their pay scales with the HSE pay scales. The net effect of that, said the Labour Court, was to apply pay cuts. Let us have honesty here. We know that St. Joseph's Foundation in Charleville and Marymount University Hospital and Hospice are in deep trouble financially because of this Government policy relating to these organisations. They include Abilitywest and others throughout the country. In saying that a process is now beginning, is the Taoiseach suggesting that, for the entirety of 2017, no one bothered to assess this? Did no one in the Department of Health say that, when the pay agreement was reached, section 39 organisations would be included? The opposite decision was taken. They were excluded and the Government hoped it would get away with it because it might upset the budgetary figures if they were included. That is what happened and it needs to be faced up to. I have seen the letter on behalf of the Minister to these organisations now suggesting that any resolution will have to be put into the service plan of 2019. It is obfuscation, delaying, fudge and basic dishonesty. The Taoiseach said months ago that he would look at this. He has not. He has gone along with this charade and this idea that we will begin a process on 31 January or whatever. That is wrong and it needs to be reversed. It is not fair to the workers in these organisations.

It is certainly not fair to the workers in these organisations who have been caught in the middle between their employers, the section 39 organisations-----

They are not caught in the middle.

-----the HSE and the Government. I can only give the facts. The Deputy is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts.

It is not opinion. It is a fact. They are not being paid.

As I said earlier, the Government has proposed a process by which we can resolve this issue. I am pleased to confirm that just last night, one of the two unions concerned, Fórsa, has accepted the Government's offer and proposal. I welcome that Fórsa, as a trade union, accepted our proposal and process to resolve this. I hope SIPTU will follow suit.