CHESHIRE Homes face a number of strikes this year unless they receive funding to improve pay and conditions, the Department of Health has been told.
The warning comes in a pre Budget submission from the Cheshire Foundation in Ireland, which says it is the main provider of housing and accommodation services to people with physical disabilities in the State.
Insufficient support from health boards has led to strikes in each of the past two years and "if wages and conditions of employment are not improved during 1996, the threat of further strikes in Cheshire Homes is a very big possibility", the foundation says.
To bring pay and conditions in the Cheshire Homes up to the level enjoyed by people doing similar work in the health boards would require extra revenue of more than £1 million, it says.
The Cheshire Foundation provides accommodation for more than 250 people and has 204 full time and part time employees. Since 1990, it has become involved in new projects or in the expansion of existing projects - in Ballina, Dublin Sligo Letterkenny, Killarney. Newcastle West, Co Limerick, and Shillelagh, Co Wicklow.
"The Cheshire Foundation and its services have developed in spite of insufficient revenue funding from health boards," it says.
In a separate submission, a group of voluntary organisations complains that 19 per cent of all State grants received by charities are taken back in taxes.
The Irish Charities' Tax Reform Group, which represents, more than 60 charities, including the Society of St Vincent de Paul, Barnardos and the Irish Cancer Society, calls for a change in the VAT regime for charities, "particularly as its members cannot recover VAT on printing, publicity and many capital costs which they incur in order to carry out their work".