Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the delegates for attending. This is a topic I feel very passionate about. I spoke at the same joint committee as Mr. Dunne on the very issue of the constitutional amendment. It is no exaggeration to say every political party bar our own has been seeking to delete the part of the Constitution in question. Sometimes it feels like you are shouting against a stream when it comes to carers, partly because those who get elected and make policies are usually working for pay and are not those who are really representative of carers and those who are at home. To come out of the home and enter something like politics takes a big leap. People do it because they feel they have no other option since there is nobody speaking for them. This is the reason I went onto the Labour Panel. However, I completely agree with Professor Lynch's point in that this is not about labour. We sometimes talk about care and labour as if they are the same thing. It is not necessarily about unpaid labour but about a different thing. Sometimes it is about labour but sometimes it is about the person being cared for and their right to be cared for as well as our right to be recognised for the care work we do. We need to separate out the facts that some people are caring for those with additional needs with unique challenges on that basis and that there are those who are caring for their children or older members of their family. It is almost an embarrassment to say one wants to provide such care. There are many things like the carer's allowance to support those caring for those with additional needs but there is no reason somebody who wishes to care for his or her own children should not be able to make that choice and put food on the table.

Mr. Dunne spoke about the universal basic income for artists. I feel very strongly that a universal basic income should be considered for those who are caring because those who do not have an income are currently the ones who are hard-pressed. As human beings, we should not have to make a decision in this regard.

What social or policy instruments can we or should we use to make sure Ireland does not become a place where we talk only about institutional childcare? Asking that is not to denigrate the profession at all but to say there are several types of care. The Minister responsible for children, Deputy O'Gorman, has said he is going to invest a significant amount of money in childcare. Are there other Departments that should be making finances available to ensure we do not say nobody can care for their children at home because they cannot afford the inflationary impact of that?

Those are my initial thoughts on the matter. It is really good that we are having this airing but I do not want it to focus only on our right to get back out to work and to have an affordable childcare model. There is another part to being human, which is about caring.