Over the past year, I have raised with the Taoiseach the plight of section 39 organisations, particularly hospices, and the fact that they did not get a fair deal from the Government in the restoration of pay under the turnaround of the financial emergency measures in the public interest legislation. While the Government's position has shifted, overall it has been mean-spirited and lacked any moral compass.

In addition to hospices, the Taoiseach knows that many organisations are labelled "section 39" but, in essence, do the State's work in catering for people with disabilities and children with special needs. We know that thousands of people across the country depend on such organisations for residential services, respite services, day care and support services, personal assistance, home care assistance and access to therapies. For many of these people, even those services, for example, respite and access to therapies, are not fully adequate or sufficient.

I am referring to organisations like Enable Ireland, Rehab, Acquired Brain Injury Ireland and the Irish Wheelchair Association at national level and, regionally, Ability West, the Western Care Association, the Kerry Parents and Friends Association and the St. Joseph's Foundation in Charleville, which covers Limerick and Cork. There simply would be no services for people with disabilities without those organisations.

In research commissioned recently on behalf of these organisations under the title, Who Cares? Building a new relationship between the not-for-profit sector and the State 2018, the reality is brought home in terms of the financial crisis that such organisations are in - they are no longer sustainable financially - and the Government's lack of honesty in meeting the actual cost of services that are being delivered on the ground by the agencies. This is important research and, in essence, it captures the crisis and the lack of honesty in the relationship between the Government and these agencies.

The Government has compounded the crisis and made it far worse in respect of the restoration of pay for the workers in these organisations. They are not getting a full restoration of pay. There is a significant differential at the end of each month between such workers and workers in the general health service.

Why are those agencies and workers who look after people with disabilities and very sick people penalised so blatantly by Government through its pay policy? Why are they discriminated against so much? It suggests a morally bankrupt position for Government to adopt. It places these agencies in financial peril and will result in the cutting of services.

In Ireland, we provide our health and social care through a number of different mechanisms. Sometimes it is provided directly by the State through the HSE while at other times, it is provided through a section 38 body, which is a voluntary body. St. Vincent's University Hospital, which is not too far from here, would be an obvious example where the staff are considered to be public servants but the body itself is not part of the public service. Sometimes this care is provided through section 39 bodies, some of whom have been mentioned by the Deputy. In these cases, the body receives some of its funding from the State and often receives some of it from other sources. The people employed in these organisations are not public servants. Sometimes care is provided through private contracts. For example, most of our GP and dental services are provided by GPs and dentists who are self-employed and have staff who are not on public service contracts and are not part of the public service pay bill. That is how we structure our health and social care services in Ireland. We provide those services in lots of different ways - sometimes directly by the State through State employees, sometimes through private contractors like GPs and dentists who have their own employees, sometimes through section 38 bodies, and sometimes through section 39 bodies. For better or for worse, that is the way it has grown up since the foundation of the State.

There was a dispute about pay in section 39 bodies that went to the Workplace Relations Commission. We have an agreement and I would expect the employers and the unions to honour that agreement. I am sure they will. I do not have the exact figures relating to funding in front of me. I will dig them out. Funding for section 39 bodies has increased for each of the past three years. Funding for these bodies has increased at a higher rate than has funding for the HSE and its own services. While HSE services got a certain increase, the section 39 bodies got a larger increase than the HSE, so the assessment offered by the Deputy does not really add up. If the HSE bodies are getting less of an increase than the section 39 bodies, the section 39 bodies should be well able to afford any additional spending the HSE bodies are providing.

The Taoiseach is not living in the land of reality with regard to these agencies. He is in denial, as is Government. We have met the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Minister for Finance. The bottom line is that I am not offering up that analysis. It is commissioned research that the Taoiseach should read but it is also the reality on the ground. I have met representatives of St. Joseph's Foundation in Charleville, which has done heroic work for years.

We all know about the history of the relationship between the State and these organisations. The more recent history is that Government instructed the agencies to cut pay in line with the financial emergency measures in the public interest, FEMPI, legislation but when it came to the restoration of pay, these agencies were left out. This was never an industrial relations issue. The unions will look after their members but what they have not done is look after the agencies and they will not do so because it is not their remit. Many posts will not benefit from pay restoration because workers who came in after the cuts do not get any restoration so the agencies get no funding for that. Neither is there retrospective funding in terms of those agencies that have engaged in pay restoration.

The situation is very grave for agencies like Kerry Parents and Friends Association, Ability West, St. Joseph's Foundation and the hospices which have told me they will cut services in January. That is the reality. They have been shortchanged. What has happened is fundamentally wrong. These agencies should have been kept in line with the HSE, which was always the case and which had been underpinned by Labour Court recommendations down through the years and indeed since 2010 onwards. It is not fair to say what the Taoiseach has said with regard to them.

As I have said before, these bodies are all very different. Some section 39 bodies are very small, may only receive €10,000 or €20,000 from the HSE and may have only one employee or a part-time employee. Other section 39 bodies are very large, have a large number of staff and provide a large number of services.

Sometimes they have very little other income, other than what they get from the State. Sometimes they have very large income, which they either raise themselves, get from bequests or raise from their assets because some of them have substantial assets and surpluses.

The research states they are all in deficit.

Each of the bodies is very different and for each of them a service level agreement is put in place with the HSE. That body receives a particular amount of money in order to honour the service level set out in the service level agreement. That is the way it is done. It is similar to a contract, for example.