Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The point Mr. Lawler highlights is a serious issue, whereby if a person does not have a previous record, he or she might not get the carer's allowance credit payment. Some people who moved abroad move home to care. They may end up staying home for ten or 20 years caring but remain out of the system in that context. That is a gap that needs to be addressed.

In regard to the other issue, sometimes it is not necessarily those who are on carer's allowance or carer's benefit, for example, qualified adults who may be caring for children at home. They are registered as qualified adults on their partners' payments or wages but they are not necessarily accruing credits in their own names. When their children reach a certain age, those people may try voluntarily to seek access to schemes such as Intreo or back to education. There are many situations where somebody who has been a qualified adult but who has not been visible in the system individually wants to access measures such as back to education or other positive and very good schemes that are available. However, for most of those schemes it is necessary to have been registered as a jobseeker for a certain period of time or it is necessary to have been in the system. The system at the moment only looks at the past two years, and if a person has not been working or no individual stamps have been paid on his or her behalf, he or she is quite invisible. It is a case of the care credits that are being accumulated and will be recognised for pension purposes also being recognised in accessing employment and education schemes.