Mr. John Dunne:

I was asked about uniqueness internationally. A typology has been developed in the European Union. Scandinavians tend to put the primary responsibility on the state but there is a downside to that, because a person who is worried about his or her mother can be told to go away because the state is looking after her. It is a bit of a caricature but there would not be much appetite for such an approach in Ireland. Throughout the rest of Europe, the state primarily relies on, and recognises, the role of the family. The German system is driven by compulsory insurance so one pays for one's care in old age. If someone does not have children, he or she pays a higher premium because the state recognises there will be nobody to help to look after him or her. In Estonia, it is written into the constitution that the family has primary responsibility for "antecedents", that is, parents. They have just begun to relax this but, up to now, the state has said it was a family's responsibility and the state had nothing to do with it. If people have living children or other relatives, the state will do nothing and will only look after them if they are completely isolated. On the other side of the coin, there is the Portuguese system, under which the state depends on families for caring. The state recognises that it is in its interest to help families with caring and that it would fall over without them.

At least 80% of care in Ireland is delivered unpaid. Someone in receipt of carer's allowance gets it in lieu of unemployment benefit. The former Department of Social Protection accepted the point we made a few years ago that it is not in the State's interest to force carers out of the home to take up paid employment, because it would then have to backfill with paid services. Being paid, therefore, does not include getting carer's allowance, though even carers sometimes get a bit confused by that and say they are getting money from the State. For us, paid work is performed by homecare workers and carers in the family home are unpaid, whether they are getting assistance from the State.

I can send the committee information on the international position. There are five models and five systems but we are unusual in that nowhere in legislation, or in the Constitution, does it say what the respective roles of the State and the family are. Our argument is that it is a partnership and that should be captured somewhere as a fundamental statement, by which we mean putting it into the Constitution.