Ms Zoe Hughes:

I thank the Senator for his questions. On the first point on needing to repeatedly prove that a disability exists or whatever it might be, the same applies to reviews of means-testing for carer’s allowance, which is what I am familiar with. It is a source of incredible stress for family carers who are in receipt of the allowance. Only very recently, we heard a couple of reports of family carers who received a letter that was dated probably a week before it was sent out by the Department, which meant that carers themselves only had about four days to get all of the documentation together for their review before it was cut off. If you ring thing the Department and the system, they will say that it is fine and they just need it back in the next ten days or whatever it might be. However, family carers often just do not have the time to chase bank statements, proofs of disability for the person they care for and proofs of need. It is an incredibly stressful time and caring is stressful enough as it is.

On whether disability or carer’s allowance could be a global, universal payment that a person keeps regardless of entry into the workforce, I would like to go back to a point I was going to make in response to Deputy Tully around what the social protection system is for and what it is designed to do. It is a good opportunity to see how we view individuals within society. Are they tiny economic units of production or are they members of a community who are working together to create a community and a good place live and grow in Ireland? That is probably bringing my own viewpoint into it, as opposed to my organisational viewpoint. It is important that family carers contribute a huge amount to society but are often not viewed as that. If they do not get payments or do not see that, they are kind of in limbo in some ways. Are they working or not? They are not working but not getting a payment. It is not necessarily recognised terribly well in those grey areas, which is why the idea of something such as universal basic income or a participation income is a helpful tool to think about when we think about these issues. The carer’s support grant, in some ways, is a payment that is available to family carers regardless of their work status. It is not a means-tested payment; a person providing full-time care can be in receipt of that. That is a once-off payment in June of €1,800 at the moment, I believe.

It comes back to how individuals with disabilities and family carers are viewed. Do we have to compel people to work or can we perceive what they are contributing in other ways to be just as valuable as being part of a paid workforce? That is not to say that being part of a paid workforce does not have massive benefits socially, mentally and economically – of course it does.

I do not know if I answered the Senator’s question, but those are some of the thoughts I wrote down when he was speaking.