Ms Catherine Bond:

We are aware that a number of foster carers who have reached retirement age are now interrogating their entitlements under the contributory State pension. For many of them, it is a difficult process to gather all of the information. The vast majority of them have been fostering for a long period of their lives. We must remember that if I take in a child at the age of two weeks, as Ms Corridon has done, and I have the child until they are 23 years of age, I might then take in a five-year-old child five years down the road and have that child until they are 23. Therefore, there are limitations to somebody taking up paid employment. The only way someone might have the required number of contributions would be if they were made prior to that person entering fostering. This is certainly an issue we could interrogate further among our members who are in this predicament. We need the State to recognise the duration for which somebody fosters and to make contributions for them. The comparative cost of children in residential care is substantially higher, and will always be substantially higher, than a State pension to foster carers. The vast majority of foster carers foster more than one child. We have members who would have fostered 30 or 40 children throughout their period of being a foster carer.