Patricia Ryan (Kildare South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As Sinn Féin spokesperson for older people, I am delighted to take the opportunity to speak in support of this motion. I thank the Regional Group for bringing it before the House.

In data compiled by the Central Statistics Office, a carer is defined as someone who provides unpaid assistance to others. Almost 500,000 people, women, men and incredible children under 15 years of age, are carers. These people spend their lives caring for family members, whether it be elderly parents or a child or adult dependant with special needs who will continue to need care for a very long time to come. Let us not forget those elderly people who are left to care for ill and vulnerable spouses or adult disabled children with special and often complex needs. These people save the State countless billions of euro each year by giving up their lives to care for their loved ones. They do amazing work and yet their carer's allowance is still means tested. Their caring is taken for granted. Means testing the carer's allowance is adding insult to injury. We must realise that these carer payments as they stand do not even come up to minimum essential standard-of-living tests. The Government needs to recognise the invaluable work carers do.

I have a carer in my constituency who is a mother in her 80s, still caring for a profoundly disabled son who is 50 years of age. How is that fair? She gets little or no respite. My colleague spoke about that as well. The woman goes nowhere because she cannot leave her son. That is not good enough.

On numerous occasions, Sinn Féin has called for changes to the carer's allowance system. In our charter for carers, we recommend higher income thresholds, increasing eligibility through relaxing the means test and raising the income disregard thresholds. It is time these people were looked after. I expect that the House will support this motion.

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