Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I think Deputy Smith is not coming in. I thank the Regional Group for bringing forward this important motion. People Before Profit strongly believes we should abolish the means test for carer's allowance. Indeed, we are against means testing full stop. I will talk a bit more about that. In the case of carers, it is completely unacceptable. Hundreds of thousands of people in this country, out of care and love for children with special needs or disability, family members, or the elderly who are unwell or disabled, provide them with care and do the State an enormous service in the process. If it was fully recognised and acknowledged, it would be clear this saves the State billions of euro every year. However, Ireland has always done care on the cheap. The use of phrases like "vocation" has become an excuse to underpay those who provide care of all sorts, including the so-called caring professions, particularly women, or not to pay them at all. That is absolutely wrong.

It was brought home to me recently by a women I met on the street in Dún Laoghaire who talked about how she had given up her entire career to look after her children with special needs. She did it out of love. She was not sorry that she did but she talked about the daily struggle, the lack of supports, respite, the pressure, the stress of all of that and the lack of acknowledgement. Although she was not citing her own example, she talked about others she knew in a similar situation and described the vulnerability that women expose themselves to because of the means testing of carer's allowance, which may rule them out of it altogether and therefore make them entirely dependent on their partner. As she put it, she knew of women who had to beg husbands for money for Tampax. That is a terrible position to put women in. In situations of possible domestic abuse, that is putting women in a desperate position of vulnerability.

This is precisely why in respect of one of the universal payments we have, the children's allowance, it was recognised as critical to give a payment directly to women. There are very few people who would not say that was the right thing to do. This is about the independence and respect of our carers, the majority of whom are women. The current situation is about trapping them in dependence and in poverty. That is wrong and it has to stop.

The other critical point is that there are always going to be significant numbers of people on the wrong side of thresholds and eligibility criteria. We all know it. We see example after example; a few euro over and you lose your supports. You are allowed work 18 hours. If you work 19 hours, you lose it all. That is wrong. It is trapping people in poverty and dependence. It has to go. We need to provide carers with certainty, independence and respect. I do not think there is any excuse for it being retained. I hear the Government saying it is looking at it. It should go.

If the message was not clear enough, it was made absolutely clear by carers and people with disabilities in the recent referendum. People did not vote against that for regressive reasons but because they felt the Government was not willing to give carers and people with disabilities the rights they deserve. That is why they voted against it, whatever people may think. By the same token, I believe we should get rid of the means test for disability allowance. The Minister of State may say there could be people on very high incomes with a disability who would excessively benefit from something like that. In truth, just like the universal payment for children's allowance, if we get rid of the means test for carer's allowance, as we should, it is the quickest and easiest way to give the support, payment and acknowledgement to people. For a small number of people who might be on very high incomes, if the State wants to claw the payment back, it can do so through the tax system.

Think about the massive waste of resources in means testing. There are whole sections of multiple Departments spending all their time means-testing people. It is a waste of money and a waste of resources.

Indeed, we would go further and not just get rid of the means test. There should be a living wage for carers and a minimum, decent disability payment in the arena of €350 a week, which disability campaigners are talking about. The majority of those who get the payments, which are very low payments, are in effect below the poverty line. It is wrong that many people with disabilities and carers are trapped in poverty. They should have a decent living income. If we are talking about equality, why should people be trapped in that situation because of disability or because they provide care for loved ones, family members or friends?

Slightly tangential but connected, the thresholds for medical cards need to be addressed. It is crazy that the threshold for medical card eligibility is less than the basic social welfare payment. The reviews of people aged over 70 are absolutely crazy. For example, I recently met a man who is over 80 years of age, for whom nothing had changed his life, yet he lost his medical card because of a review.

See this speech in context