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A series of cases that have come before the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) since the beginning of the year shine a light on the work permits system and foreign health care workers.
We have looked previously at instances where persons have travelled to Ireland to work for companies here that are owned by other persons from the same country only to find themselves grossly exploited and in several instances being awarded recompense by the WRC.
One such company, Unity Healthcare Services Limited has been before the Commission on nine separate occasions this year. In the most recent adjudication decision on March 10, Silibaziso Nondo was awarded the promised yearly salary of €30,420. In February eight other employees were also awarded the annual salary.
Nondo was living in Zimbabwe when she applied for a position with Unity in 2022 and was offered a job following an online interview. She was told she would have to pay €2,300 for accommodation and a work permit. She received a permit in November 2023 and then applied for a visa.
She was to start in November 2023 but only arrived here in February 2024 and was to begin work as a Healthcare Assistant at €15 per hour. She said that she was not met by anyone from the company and claimed that she was never provided with details of work and only received €400 from the company despite having given them €2,300, paid by her son here, for an accommodation deposit and to cover her work permit application.
The response of Unity Healthcare to the WRC provides an interesting insight into how they recruited people from Zimbabwe through the work permit system and the manner in which that system operates.
Unity claim that they were part of a recruitment fair in Zimbabwe and that they offered Nondo a job based on her holding of a Zimbabwean social care certificate. They claim that it was contingent on her finding accommodation and getting a work permit.
Unity Healthcare had a contract with Tusla for what they described to the WRC as “emergency residential care for children under 18.” They stated that the contract “fell through” in October, 2024, due to “Tulsa’s ongoing compliance review of their residential centre,” which was in Virginia, county Cavan.
I contacted Tusla with several questions regarding the contract, payments made, and the reasons why it was withdrawn and they have said that they are “looking into this at present” and will revert to me.
The company claims that they told Nondo not to come to Ireland while the review was ongoing. They told the WRC that their only contract with Nondo was to support her application for a work permit in August 2023 and that this contract was not an actual employment contract.
Unity Healthcare claimed that Ms. Nondo had travelled directly to Wexford when she arrived in Ireland and that she had worked for cash payments with a company based in Wexford in which her son is a director.
They claimed that she also worked for another company using the work permit that had been issued to her on the understanding that she would be working for Unity. They claimed that Nondo had “used their company to enter Ireland, and was neither ready nor available for employment.”
There is a company called Glenlorn that is based in New Ross, county Wexford, and it is jointly owned by Kgotso Mziwandile Nondo and Decent Clure. Nondo is a Zimbabwean national who was born in 1999. Glenlorn describes itself as providing a wide range of care services as well as a cleaning service which it describes as “an Irish owned subsidiary” of Glenlorn.
Kgotso Nondo’s Linkedin page states that he still works as a support worker for the Brothers of Charity charity in Waterford, and that he previously worked as a Healthcare Assistant with Clannad Care and Aperee who are one of the major operators of nursing homes.
In eight other cases that were decided in February in favour of the complainant, Unity Healthcare did not respond. The complaints are all similar regarding the nature of the recruitment other than in one case the complainant stated that he had been offered a job with another company, Reign Healthcare, but that before travelling to Ireland he was told that he would be “transferred” over to Unity.
All of the companies named have received work permits which surely raises questions over how the applications are decided given what appears to be the rather ad hoc arrangements and procedures that surround the recruitment and placement of Healthcare Assistants from outside of the EU to work in the Irish health service.
I shall be returning to this tomorrow.
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