Employment Law and Vaccine Policies

It's recommended that all frontline workers

are risk assessed,

and therefore their jobs are moved and redeployed elsewhere off

the frontline.

And are you allowed do that under, under, under, under employment law?

Are you actually allowed do that?

That's the HSE policy.

That's the HSE policy?

The HSE policy that has come out from the HSE.

What do you think of that, Pat?

From central office.

I never heard of that.

I take it

Absolutely. I, that's, that's so totally, absolutely amazing.

I never heard of that.

And I read it says, it's just in the time, you've probably, you've probably have

read it at some stage, uh, "Staff will be able to return to the

workplace even if

they refuse the COVID vaccine, and will not have to tell their employer

or

colleagues whether they have been received the jab, legal experts say." Right?

Okay. "Employees enjoy powerful rights to

privacy, to bodily integrity, including

the right to reject medical treatment." You can't change that contract.

It's within our gift to, to, to redeploy staff.

Uh-

It's a different role, isn't it? It's like a totally different role.

Well, look, it is to me, to-

What if they say to you to do something else tomorrow?

Sorry, like, look at it like that. That's like me saying to you,

"You're not doing

this. We're gonna put you down there," and would you like that? No, you're not.

Well, I was at the front desk at the start of

COVID, and

No, no. Great

... we can, you know, staff can be redeployed as, as, as,

as we consider

appropriate.

It's, it's a straight forward question. There's no twist in it.

If he decides not to, now I don't say refuses, if he decides

not to take up a redeployment, what is

the option? That's what I'm saying. That's a straight,

it's a straight question.

What's the... Tell me the a-

You still have decided to decline the vaccine at this time.

Yeah, 'cause the information given to me wasn't

right, Anne Marie.

That's fine.

That's right.

So that's fine.

Yeah.

So then there's a risk assessment, which is here,

that you didn't want to sign.

Absolutely.

And the risk assessment then will say that Matt will be redeployed to other

non-frontline duties. Those frontline duties at the moment with

other

HCAs are, they're working on, um, filing, they're

working on charts, they're working on, I suppose, instead of being on the

frontline with the patients-

But then you're changing my whole contract, Anne Marie.

Yeah.

You are. Now, this is, sorry, I have to interrupt you, Marie,

'cause what you're

saying there is actually changing my whole work contract.

Yeah.

That can't happen just like that willy-nilly.

You can't make a decision like that on my contract.

Is there any stage at all that any HCA can come back who's un-

unvaccinated and go

back into their normal duty?

Come August or September, we expect that the majority of the population will

be

vaccinated.

At that stage, that's only, like, two months away, until then when there is,

like,

what they're calling is herd immunity, you and your colleagues who are not vaxed

can come back into the workplace but need to be swabbed every day

and wear full

PPE.

That's the option.

Be swabbed every day and wear full PPE?

Now, that's not HSE guidelines at the moment.

That hasn't come out, but we would like to think that maybe

that might happen

in a month or two, because we don't know what's gonna happen

with this Indian

variant.

Will this be all legal then to move forward?

This'll be all, will it be all-

Which?

To do this. It, it's okay to do this, is it?

Yes.

It's, yeah. Is it?