Ms Clare Duffy:

I want to return to Deputy Clarke’s first question about looking at the number of carers. It is scary how that is responded to that from a policy perspective. The Department of Social Protection put a definition on carers as being full-time carers. That is how we tend to define it as well in our work. We have full-time carers, then there are carers who are providing fewer hours. The definition of full-time care is providing more than 35 hours of care each week.

We must recognise the real challenge that we have in identifying and establishing how many carers there are. One of the recommendations of the Commission on Pensions was to establish statutory register of family carers. It has made a strong recommendation on developing a dedicated pensions solution for long-term carers. It is one of the recommendations of the citizens’ assembly. Aligned to that, it also said in its recommendations that if we are to achieve this,a statutory register of family carers is needed. That does not exist. The closest proxy we have for the number of full-time carers in Ireland is how many people receive the annual carers’ support grant. That figure is 115,000 every year.

To tie up some of this discussion at the end, and as Professor Lynch has rightly said, we have a huge anomaly between a person's right to a nursing home bed under the provisions of fair deal but no equal right to remain at home. That will all be tidied up - fingers crossed - when we have the statutory home support scheme, which is due before the end of the year.

I will go back to Deputy Clarke’s question about how policy can evolve. It is intended to help families, but yet it actually lands more on their knee. This is probably one of those examples. Under the new statutory home support scheme we have a commitment that adults of all ages will be entitled to home support where they need it. That applies to anyone over the age of 18. The HSE will simply not be able to provide all the hours of support that those people need. If someone needs full-time care and the HSE can give them ten hours, who provides the balance of that care? Again, it is going back to the families.