Charities may be unable to deliver many services in the coming months due to a staffing crisis directly linked to funding shortfalls from the Government, according to Ivan Cooper, chief executive officer of The Wheel, Ireland’s national association of charities.
Mr Cooper said that the state has relied on charities for many decades to deliver almost one third of all public services in areas such as health, children, older people, disability, addiction and homelessness.
“It knows we can, and do, deliver. Yet wage cuts imposed after the economic crash over a decade ago – and reversed elsewhere – remain in place for hundreds of section 39, 56 and 10 charities, putting services at risk,” he said.
Pauline McKeown CEO of Coolmine Therapeutic Community, who provide drug and alcohol treatment, said at Croke Park on Tuesday that 34 per cent of their staff have left in the last 12 months, and that 19 per cent of their total workforce roles are currently in the recruitment phase.
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Speaking at The Wheel’s National Charity Summit in Croke Park on Tuesday, Mr Cooper also said that the organisation is calling on all Government departments that fund community and volunteer organisations to deliver services to increase their budgets by 15-20 per cent, as is needed “to put those services on a sustainable footing”.
“The salaries are falling further and further behind the salaries in the statutory system and the public service, but those salaries are increasing because public servants are getting eight per cent, 10 per cent salary increases,” Mr Cooper said.
“In the voluntary sector, the salaries aren’t increasing and there’s a 7 or 8 per cent inflation rate which is further eroding them, so people are just walking away from the jobs in the voluntary service.”
Mr Cooper added that 70 per cent of services in Ireland are delivered by independent community voluntary organisations, and many of them are in large part funded by the state, and that the most pressing issues for The Wheel’s members were the lack of funding and the pay and retention crisis.
Suzanne Connolly, CEO of Barnardos, said at the summit that the sector can become “exploitative” if proper funding is not provided, as “the staff who do give their lives to this world become drained, stressed” and can feel under appreciated, which can ultimately affect the quality of service provision.
Ms McKeown also said that addiction and homeless services across the voluntary and community sector are at a “critical point” because “full cost to deliver on services is not in place and pay parity is not in place, and we are bleeding staff,” which is not sustainable.
Joe O’Brien, Minister of State at the Department of Rural and Community Development with special responsibility for Community Development and Charities, also spoke at the summit.
“We need workers in every sector, the community and voluntary sector is no different from that as well, and certainly, there are issues in terms of pay in subsections of the community voluntary sector as well, and where Government is a contributing funder in situations like that, we do have a responsibility to make sure that those organisations are properly rewarded,” he said.
