THE TWO-TIER TREATMENT OF WORKERS IS INDICTMENT OF HOW THEY ARE VALUED

THE recent vaccine scandals exposed in this newspaper over the past ten days have revealed a jaw-dropping sense of entitlement among the well-heeled in society.

But they have also exposed the two-tier approach to how workers are treated.

In the mid-2000s, as a Siptu official, I represented a nurse who was under investigation when gardaí found items from the hospital where she worked in her home.

She had bandages that she was using for her son who had been injured. That visit from the gardaí was the start of years of stress for her and her family.

The matter was referred to An Bord Altranais, now the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland, for a hearing into her fitness to practice and to the courts for prosecution.

We saw in the past week on Prime Time Investigates how the HSE and Department of Health will fight families tooth and nail because they dare to demand basic services for their kids with special needs.

The HSE can be relentless and, when that force is turned on you, it can put workers under unimaginable stress.

So when I read in the paper that a consultant had ‘taken home’ precious vaccines to vaccinate their family, memories of that nurse came flooding back.

THE situation is somewhat similar, but I fear that the way they will be treated is likely to be very different. That nurse took supplies that were plentiful and easily replaced, while the consultant took valuable vaccines that not only are in short supply, but are subject to a Government-controlled ration and distribution plan.

I sincerely hope that those across the system who are responsible for the queue-skipping and the inappropriate use of these precious vaccines are dealt with fairly and that they are entitled to have due process and to be represented.

But there is no getting away from the fact that when the HSE wants to take action against you it can be tough – it must remain tough in this case and there can be no upstairs-downstairs approach to dealing with workers.

Regardless of grade, this is a serious matter. Just because some of the people involved are highranking administration and medical-grade workers does not mean that they get a free pass.

You have to ask yourself and reflect on how a hospital cleaner would be treated if they were caught taking home ‘excess’ vaccines.

The two-tier attitude to workers is endemic in our society and the recent actions by Government also highlight how they value those working on the frontline.

For instance, the Government’s own plan prioritised the vaccination of certain frontline workers. That is what these workers were promised – in fact it was one of deal-breakers for agreement with the teachers’ unions on the reopening of schools.

Yet on the 11th hour, and without any consultation, the Government ripped up its plan last Tuesday without any consultation or forewarning.

No frontline workers are to be prioritised, and instead any further rollout will be determined by age and age alone.

I have spoken to teachers and SNAs who feel angry, frustrated and let down yet again. They were told for months by Government that maintaining education standards and keeping schools open was their top priority.

It is an insult for the Government – from Taoiseach Micheál Martin down – to make repeated sweeping statements like that, only to then strip vaccine priority for the staff who go into work every day and ensure that schools can remain open safely.

In reality, teachers and school workers were led down the garden path – and we have a Minister for Education in Norma Foley who is now trying to wash her hands of the failure to live up to her commitments.

At a Fianna Fáil parliamentary party meeting on Wednesday, Minister Foley shirked responsibility and said that the National Immunisation Advisory Committee must provide a ‘detailed rationale’ for its recommendation to change the vaccination sequence.

This is the same Minister who a day previously sat at the Cabinet table that decided on that very change. She can’t have it both ways and needs to take ownership of her own decisions.

From retail staff, to teachers, to family carers, to gardaí, we have had workers on the frontline putting the health and that of their families on the line for the past 13 months to keep us fed, to educate our children, to keep loved ones healthy, and to keep our communities safe.

But when it comes to offering those workers some respite and some reward for their efforts, they are ignored, agreements made with them are torn up, while the well-heeled and well-connected skip the queue.

UP and down the State, we have school staff in many cases working in buildings that were already unfit for purpose pre-pandemic and even more so in these current conditions, yet the only school staff group to have been vaccinated are from a fee-paying private school.

And it is a damning indictment of how Government values those working on the frontline that the decision to change the vaccination sequence came less than a week after Craig Hughes, writing in this newspaper, exposed that 20 teachers and staff in St Gerard’s received vaccines from the private Beacon Hospital because of their connections. But this, too often, is how upstairs-downstairs Ireland works. O