Several times over the past couple of months I have had to raise with the Taoiseach and the Minister for Health the issue of the pandemic bonus payment. It has still not been paid to many front-line healthcare workers. Many workers who work in nursing homes, some of the carers of whom we spoke earlier who are not HSE staff and staff in section 39 organisations that provide services to people with disabilities have still not been paid. We were told that there was a verification process in place and an organisation that will verify those payments. It is taking too long. Many of the section 39 organisations I spoke with can self-assess. They need to be given the power to do that and pay this bonus quickly. Will the Minister for Health agree to that to speed up this process and ensure Deputies do not have to continuously raise this issue? That we are still talking about it at the end of October when it was announced nine months ago is outrageous. Pay them what they are due and get on with it.

More than 124,000 people have received the bonus, which is welcome. However, I am not satisfied on two fronts. First, the Defence Forces, the fire brigade and prison nurses have yet to be paid. I have instructed the Department of Health to take that back from the HSE and expedite that payment in the coming weeks. Second, the HSE is nervous of making payments and overpayments to section 39 and private organisations. I am seeking for them to move to a self-assessment model where each of these organisations will itself calculate what it is owed. We would then make those payments but, critically, those payments would then be audited after the fact in order to speed this up. I have asked the HSE to come back to me with an accelerated timeline.