Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses. This is a very important topic and their presence reflects that, as does the committee's commitment not only to consider what the Citizens' Assembly has recommended but to somehow translate that into policy in the future. That is what has me so concerned about these numbers and the number of people who are caring because no policymaker can plan effectively if we do not have the data.

I agree that the definition of "care" in some respects needs to be a little more structured than it is at the moment. It is too narrow in many respects. As Ms Duffy said, people who do not provide personal care believe they are not a carer. That is not true. The first issue is why we are not asking the right questions. The second is that we will not get the information we need to address the needs of carers now and in the future. We cannot say we are unable to plan properly until the next census comes around, by which time we may have got the questions right. That is an abdication of responsibility and it is simply not tolerable.

We know the carer's allowance is subject to a means test. I have a very strong opinion on this because as well as putting additional pressure on a single person to provide care, it also puts that person in a vulnerable position by making him or her financially dependent on somebody else. This effectively creates a cycle whereby that person cannot look at other options for personal development and the difficulty that creates may result in someone else in the family unit who may wish to take on responsibility for providing care being unable to do so.

We know the census is not correlating the right data. We cannot definitively put a figure on the number of young carers in the country. How do we fix that because it needs to be fixed? Is there a solution? I agree with Ms Duffy that not all young people who provide care are vulnerable. Sometimes, however, there can be a very thin line between not being vulnerable today and being in absolute crisis next week. If those young people do not identify as carers in the first place, it is likely they will not have information available to them on where they can go for support. We am very concerned for the well-being of those people.

I return to the issue of maternity leave. Professor Lynch touched on the issue and did an excellent job in that regard, but there is another aspect to maternity benefit that does not get the level of concentration it deserves. I say this as somebody who has had four children and without once having my maternity benefit topped up. There is another side to this. It is something I am coming across more in recent times. Where a woman is the primary earner in the home and her maternity benefit is not topped up by the employer, the family cannot apply for a mortgage. The financial restrictions the family face most likely mean there will be a break in their savings, which has a longer term impact on the family in terms of having a child. This is likely to have a significant impact on people choosing to have children and whether they delay having children. It could potentially put a family into crisis if the pregnancy was unplanned. That then impacts on their ability to provide stability and a roof over the rest of their children's heads in the long term.

The witnesses mentioned the experience of male carers. Gender inequality fails everybody, not just women and girls, but men and boys too. Sometimes those who are in a caring role speak of being isolated. Sometimes it is geographic isolation and at others it is emotional isolation and isolation related to their well-being. Do the witnesses see more of that in men who are carers because of the lack of recognition of the work they do and the care they provide?

I want to touch on the role of home care workers. The organisations Mr. Dunne and Ms Hughes represent do some good work on that. People are asking and want to live independently for longer. They want to remain in their own homes for as long as possible. If we are going to become more reliant on home care workers, what is the long-term impact of us failing to do proper workforce planning? We know the area is underappreciated. The staff are certainly overworked and underpaid. The terms and conditions are truly deplorable in some instances. If we, as policymakers, do not get the policy relating to pay, terms and conditions right, we will not attract other people into the sector. We will then be even more reliant on the commercialised sector. Have the witnesses looked at that in any detail? Have they any pointers on it for the committee? I am concerned. People want to stay at home. We do not have the correct mechanism in place to facilitate home care workers to do that. The system is not meeting people's needs, otherwise we would not be having this conversation, and we will be further reinforcing that problem.