Healthcare assistants and home carers: hours, travel time, sleepovers and permits

Healthcare assistants and home carers do the same work in three different settings, under three different sets of terms. In the HSE, you are on a national pay scale with the public service sick leave and leave schemes. In a private nursing home, you are on the home's own terms above the statutory floor. In home care, working for a provider or an agency that sends you to clients' homes, the statutory floor is often all you have, and the questions that matter most are whether your travel between clients is counted and paid, whether sleepovers are working time, and whether you have any fixed hours at all. A growing share of the workforce holds an employment permit. This guide covers all three settings, the permit layer, and the WRC route.

The requirements

The HSE requires a QQI Level 5 major award in Healthcare Support (or Health Service Skills) for healthcare assistant posts, and most private employers require the same or require you to complete it within a fixed period after starting. Garda vetting under the National Vetting Bureau Acts is required before you work with children or vulnerable adults, and it is done through the employer. Home care posts usually require a full driving licence and your own car, and providers registered with the HSE for home support must meet the HSE's tender conditions on staff qualifications and training.

An employer that requires the Level 5 award can agree to pay for it, and can agree in your contract that you repay some of the cost if you leave within a period. A deduction for training that was not agreed in writing in advance, or that is not fair and reasonable, may be an unlawful deduction under the Payment of Wages Act 1991. Vetting is free and an employer cannot charge you for it.

Pay: HSE, nursing homes and home care

HSE healthcare assistants are on a national incremental scale moved by the public service pay agreements and published by the HSE after each increase; the figure for your point on the scale is in the HSE pay circulars, and the HSE staff page covers the leave and sick leave schemes that go with it. This site does not reproduce the scale.

Private nursing homes and home care providers set their own rates. Some pay close to the HSE scale to compete for staff; many pay at or a little above the national minimum wage. The 2026 minimum wage is €14.15 an hour for a worker aged 20 or over, €12.74 at 19, €11.32 at 18 and €9.91 under 18. There is no employment regulation order for the care sector, so unlike contract cleaning or security there is no sector floor above the minimum wage; the HSE's home support tender has, in recent rounds, required providers to pay their staff at or above stated rates and to pay travel time, and if your employer holds an HSE contract those tender conditions are worth asking about in writing.

The minimum wage is checked over a pay reference period of up to one month: your gross pay for the period, divided by all the hours that count as working time, must reach the rate for your age. That is why travel time and sleepovers matter so much in home care. A rate of €15 an hour for care hours falls below €14.15 an hour very fast once an unpaid hour of driving between clients is added to a six-hour day. The minimum wage checker does the arithmetic across all your hours.

Sunday work must be recognised by a premium, an allowance, time off or a higher rate unless your pay already takes it into account, and the ten public holidays in 2026 (1 January, 2 February, 17 March, 6 April, 4 May, 1 June, 3 August, 26 October, 25 December and 26 December) carry a paid day off, an extra day's leave or an extra day's pay if you work them.

Travel time between clients

Under the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997, working time is time when you are at your place of work or at your employer's disposal and carrying out your duties. For a home carer, the journey from one client's home to the next, during the working day and at the employer's direction, is time at the employer's disposal and counts as working time. It counts towards your hours for the 48-hour average week, for your breaks, and for the minimum wage calculation.

Whether the contract pays that travel at the care rate, at a lower rate or by mileage is a contract question, but the minimum wage floor runs across all of it. A roster that pays only the time in the client's home and leaves the driving unpaid is the most common way a home carer ends up below the minimum wage without the employer noticing. Ask in writing how travel is treated and keep a note of your journeys. If the employer keeps no records, the WRC can expect it to disprove your account.

Travel from home to the first client and from the last client home is ordinarily not working time. Where you have no fixed base and the employer decides each day where you go, the Court of Justice has treated the first and last journeys of mobile workers as working time, and the WRC has looked at home care rosters on their facts. It is a question to raise rather than assume either way.

The 15-minute break after 4.5 hours and 30-minute break after 6 are owed in home care as anywhere else; a roster of back-to-back half-hour calls with no break is a working-time contravention, and the employer must give compensatory rest where a break cannot be taken at the usual point.

Sleepovers and on-call

A sleepover is a night spent at a client's home or in a residential unit so that you can respond if needed. Whether it is working time depends on what is required of you. Where you must remain on the premises, cannot leave, and must respond when called, the WRC and the Labour Court have in a number of decisions treated the whole period as working time, with the consequence that the minimum wage must be met across it and the hours count towards the 48-hour average and the 11-hour daily rest. Where you are free to be elsewhere and are simply on a phone, the time on call may not be working time, though the time spent responding is.

Many employers pay a flat sleepover allowance. Divide it by the hours of the sleepover: if the result, combined with your other pay over the pay reference period, falls below the minimum wage for all the hours that count, there may be a shortfall to claim. Check the current position with a union before relying on either reading; the decisions turn on the facts of the arrangement.

Hours, contracts and agency work

Your core terms, including your hours and whether you work at various places, must be in writing within 5 days and the rest within 1 month. A zero-hours contract requiring availability without guaranteeing hours is banned except for genuinely casual work, emergency cover or short-term relief; if you are sent home or given fewer hours than the contract names you are owed the lesser of three hours or 25% of the contract hours. After twelve months you can ask for a band of hours reflecting what you actually worked. If a client cancels and the provider does not reassign you, the minimum payment rule and your contract decide whether you are paid; ask for the policy in writing. The contract checker lists what must be in writing.

If you work through an agency for a nursing home or the HSE, the agency is your employer and you are entitled, from day one, to the basic pay and conditions you would have had if the hirer had employed you directly, under the Protection of Employees (Temporary Agency Work) Act 2012. An agency cannot charge you for finding you work.

Statutory sick pay is 5 days a year at 70% of pay capped at €110, after 13 weeks' service, with a certificate from day one; the HSE scheme is more generous, and a private employer's scheme replaces the statutory one only if it is at least as favourable. Annual leave is four weeks by the greatest of the three statutory methods and accrues on sick leave; the annual leave calculator works it out.

The permit layer

Healthcare assistants became eligible for a General Employment Permit in 2021, and a large part of the private care workforce now holds one. The permit sets a minimum salary and a qualification condition, both of which the Department reviews; the employer applies and pays the fee; and the Employment Permits Act 2024, commenced 2 September 2024, allows a change of employer after nine months. Those are permit matters. Your employment rights are the same as an Irish worker's: StampWise covers the permit itself.

Three employment points for permit holders in care. The salary on your permit is a contractual minimum: being paid less is an underpayment you can recover at the WRC, as well as a permit problem. The employer cannot hold your passport or recover the permit fee, recruitment costs or flights from your pay. And a complaint to the WRC does not affect your permit; the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland advises on both sides together. The work permit rights guide and the changing employer guide cover the rest.

The WRC route

Underpayment of the minimum wage across your working hours is a complaint under the National Minimum Wage Act 2000; unpaid travel time or a missing allowance that the contract promised is a Payment of Wages Act 1991 complaint; unpaid breaks, excessive hours or sleepovers counted wrongly are Organisation of Working Time Act complaints. All go online to the WRC within six months of each pay day or contravention, with no fee; the adjudicator can extend to twelve months for reasonable cause. The WRC can order the arrears and compensation. Before complaining, ask in writing for a statement of your average hourly rate for any pay reference period in the last twelve months, which must be given within four weeks, and set out your hours, travel and sleepovers. Dismissal for raising any of this is dismissal for exercising a statutory right, with no minimum service for an unfair dismissal claim. The deadline checker gives you the date and the case file keeps the roster and the figures.

Unions

SIPTU represents healthcare assistants in the HSE, in nursing homes and in home care, and has negotiated on travel time and sleepovers in the sector; Fórsa represents some health support grades in the HSE and section 38 agencies. Membership brings representation at the WRC at no charge. See which union covers you.

Where this leaves you

As a healthcare assistant or home carer your floor is the minimum wage across every hour that counts as working time, including travel between clients and, where you must stay on the premises, sleepovers, unless you are on the HSE scale or a contract above it. The minimum wage checker takes your total hours, including travel, and your pay over the period, and gives you the shortfall and the WRC route with its six-month clock. If you are on a permit, the salary on it is also your contractual minimum, and StampWise covers the permit side.