Mr. John Dunne:

No I do not believe it would leave a vacuum. I am simply trying to answer a concern that, frankly, I find a bit over the top, namely, that changing this provision in the way suggested by the Constitution Review Group will led to a floodgate of claims. We do not anticipate that and I said as much in my submission. Mrs. Justice McGuinness is also saying this. There is no conceivable way. There was a suggestion at the end of that discussion that it be subject to legislation. I believe, however, that would be redundant in the context of the way the State and the Constitution work. I just do not believe that it would be needed. We do not envisage it.

The idea of someone going in and saying "I collect my sister from school every day and I bring her home and give her tea and biscuits until our mother comes home from work so I want a carer's allowance" would be laughed out of court. We would be laughing along with everybody else because that would be a nonsense. The State's answer is that it has limited resources and they are concentrated a certain way. I cannot imagine any normal person in Ireland going with that.

I shall provide the Deputy with a different scenario, which is not a socio-economic right and which is relevant to this committee. The Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015 will be commenced some day next year. On the day it is commenced wards of court will cease to exist. The State has given itself three years to work out the current wards of court into the new system. On the day it commences every family carer in Ireland will be cast into a legal limbo until such time as they can register through the courts as an appointee under the system. We raised the point - which we thought not unreasonably - that if the State was giving itself three years to do that then how about giving carers who have been caring for perhaps 18 years already three years to also do it. The answer we received was "No, that would be against the spirit of the legislation because while parents are wonderful we all know that you cannot trust them all." That is a situation where one might have a question on whether we are really valuing care in the home if that attitude is being taken.