Staff at the Blackrock private hospital group have paid tax on a Covid-19 pandemic bonus after it unsuccessfully lobbied for the tax-free status on the bonus to be extended to private hospitals.
Blackrock Health — owner of the Blackrock, Galway and Hermitage clinics — had sought to have the tax-free status from the Government’s pandemic bonus extended to private hospital staff after it decided to pay the bonus from its own funds in recognition of staff who worked during the pandemic.
The Government announced the pandemic bonus for frontline healthcare workers last January but excluded private hospitals, despite private hospitals being “an integral part of the national response to the pandemic,” Blackrock Health said in a statement to The Irish Times.
The private hospital operator paid the bonus to all 2,400 staff working across the two Dublin hospitals, the Galway Clinic and a diagnostic clinic in Limerick.*
Staff received a bonus of €1,000 for full-time staff and €600 for part-time staff — in line with the public bonus scheme — in their September payroll, but staff lost as much as half the bonus in taxes.
“I am grateful to this private hospital group for picking up the Covid bonus payment mantle,” said one staff member. “However, I feel aggrieved that Revenue collected tax in full from every staff member. This is a healthcare worker cohort balefully ignored by the Government.”
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) said that it had long called for a mechanism to allow private hospitals and GP surgeries to pay nurses the bonus and that there was an opportunity in the budget to increase the tax-free allowance threshold from €500 to €1,000.
“This payment was first announced exactly 34 weeks ago. It is time to remove all uncertainty surrounding its administration,” said a spokeswoman for the INMO.
Blackrock Health said it paid the bonus to all staff “regardless of their department” in acknowledgment of their “invaluable contributions” during the pandemic.
“Unfortunately, the tax exemption which applies to public healthcare workers and staff in private nursing homes is not available to staff in private hospitals. We have received independent tax advice to that effect,” said the group.
Blackrock appealed to the Government and State authorities through its industry association, the Private Hospitals’ Association, to have the staff bonus treated in the same tax-free manner as in public healthcare.
“However, to date this has not happened,” said the group.
It urged the Government to consider making the bonus tax-free in the upcoming budget or with a change to the Finance Act 2022, the legislation underpinning the bonus scheme.
The pandemic bonus scheme has been fraught with difficulties and delays.
As of earlier this month, 121,487 workers were paid the bonuses, including 85,012 HSE staff and 36,475 at State-funded Section 38 organisations whose staff are considered public workers.
Staff at Section 39 organisations, which are grant-funded to work for the HSE, have not been paid, and the Government has had to hire an outside contractor to ensure nursing home staff, agency nurses and employees in long-term residential care homes receive the payments.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions wrote to Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly on September 14th to complain about delays in payments to people working outside the HSE.
It said the unions were mainly concerned at the “significant discrepancy” between Mr Donnelly’s public announcements and the details provided by officials to trade unions.
It sought confirmation the people “involved in the fight against the spread of Covid-19″ would be recognised with the bonus, including contract cleaners and security guards, agency workers, staff at Tusla, the Irish Blood Transfusion Service and the National Virus Reference Laboratory.
*This article was amended on September 19th 2022.
