Disabled people working in hospital paid €5 a day

Kitchen workers and ward helpers in a Monaghan hospital are being paid €5 a day and some get nothing at all, The Irish Timeshas learned.

A staff nurse from St Davnet's Hospital in the town said yesterday he was aware of workers with intellectual disabilities carrying out work there and being paid far below the minimum wage.

Brian McDonnell told The Irish Times: "There is one lady . . . working in the kitchen who is being paid nothing.

"She comes in most days and just helps in the kitchen. I presume they'd say it's good, therapeutic activity.

"There is another man who helps on the wards - helping making beds, that kind of thing - who is getting €5 a day.

"This is endemic through the system still and anyone who can say this labour is therapeutic, well it's intolerable and it's unacceptable."

A spokeswoman for the hospital said the main sheltered workshop on the hospital grounds had closed recently.

"There are still a small number of patients doing small duties around the hospital but this is a practice that has been going on for a long time, these are patients who have a long relationship with the hospital and it is all being phased out as part of the HSE's proactive reviews of all funded adult day services."

Meanwhile, a former medical social worker at Peamount Hospital, which ran sheltered workshops until last November, said he had tried to raise concerns with management before he left two years ago.

"I was told to mind my own business," said Tommy Morrissey, who now works for the Hospice Foundation.

A spokeswoman for the hospital denied any such concerns were "ever brought to the CEO's attention and if they were they would have been looked at".