Retired healthcare staff rehired during covid hit with demands to repay thousands of euro

Thu, 11 Jul, 2024 - 18:59

Niamh Griffin, Health Correspondent

Some retired HSE staff who answered Ireland’s call and came back to work in 2020 when the pandemic hit are now being hit with demands to re-pay thousands of euro to the HSE.

Staff in Cork and Limerick have approached TDs for help and questions were raised in the Dáil around just how many people could be affected.

Fianna Fáil TD for Cork South-West, Christopher O’Sullivan said nurses are horrified.

“They thought when they went back 'this makes sense financially for me and it won’t affect my pension',” he said, explaining a waiver was put in place during the crisis to allow for this.

However some staff are only now learning this waiver was removed during 2021.

“So any of those frontline staff who came back to help out — and who continue to help out because we have a recruitment embargo and we need them — are only now realising they need to stop working because it is going to affect their pensions,” he said, adding:

The key issue is at no point for any of the workers who have come to me was it communicated to them ‘if ye keep working here, this is going to eat into your pension’.

Now HSE letters are arriving asking the nurses to re-pay what appears to be considered as a double-payment of pay and pensions.

“The first they heard is when they started getting letters saying ‘you owe us €3,000, €4,000, or €5,000 we’ve over-paid’,” he added.

In Limerick, Fianna Fáil TD Willie O’Dea has also been contacted. He said:

These retired nurses were called back into service during covid because the services needed them.

“And they were led to believe it wouldn’t have any impact on their pensions. Now they are getting bills. One lady has a bill I believe in the order of about €20,000.”

Mr O’Sullivan was told by the Department of Health a temporary waiver of pension abatement was lifted on March 31, 2021.

In response to his parliamentary query, the department wrote: “Reliance on retired workers and exemptions from the principle of pension abatement is not a durable solution and not one that should be relied on long-term."

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He raised this in the Dáil.

Minister of State Emer Higgins said she was told the cut-off date was shared with managers across the HSE and associated services.

“I am also informed that in January 2021 communication to impacted workers happened,” she said.

She pledged to look into this further and raise it with health minister Stephen Donnelly.

Covid infection rates were 50% higher in poorest areas of country