Staff at the catering and household departments at St Patrick’s Mental Health Services in Dublin are to go on strike on Friday, February 14th in a dispute over outsourcing. St Patrick’s Mental Health Services said the decision to outsource household and catering services had been taken by its Board of Governors and management in June 2019, following a lengthy and thorough due diligence process. It said the move was aimed at supporting its strategic objective “to focus on core clinical services and to ensure that St Patrick’s Mental Health Services can continue to provide a leading mental health service”. “St Patrick’s Mental Health Services said that as part of the transfer process, and as required by transfer of undertakings (TUPE) regulations, it had confirmed with the providers of the services that transferring staff would retain identical terms and conditions of employment under their new contracts. St Patrick’s Mental Health Services said it had also agreed to honour the terms of transferring employees’ pension entitlements.

Source: The Irish Times February 07, 2020 17:41 UTC