Nursing Homes Ireland (NHI) has said that a pay deal agreed this week for the community and voluntary sector has excluded and discriminated against staff in private and voluntary nursing homes.
NHI said it has written to the Minister for Health seeking an urgent meeting on the matter.
The pay proposals for the community and voluntary sector were agreed at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) on Monday, following talks between Government representatives and unions.
The deal includes a 9.25% pay increase for up to 40,000 workers backdated to October 2024 with phased increases in 2025 and 2026.
The workers will also have an automatic link to all future public sector pay agreements.
"The agreement compounds a long history of discrimination against private and voluntary homes, with an outlandish disparity between the funding for public nursing homes versus private and voluntary ones," said Tadhg Daly, CEO of NHI.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health said that private for-profit organisations, not in receipt of funding as outlined in the scope of the agreement, are not party to the pay deal.
"These organisations are privately owned and operated and receive payment from the State through the separate, statutory Nursing Home Support Scheme," the spokesperson said.
"Neither the Department of Health, nor the Health Service Executive are the employer, therefore the terms and conditions of employment for staff in these organisations are ultimately determined between the employer and their employees," they added.
It has also emerged that hundreds of care workers, many of whom work for home care providers, have been excluded from the pay deal because of the way the organisations they work for are funded.
"Funding for services commissioned through tendering arrangements are not covered in this agreement as these are separately contracted with relevant providers," a HSE spokesperson said.
