Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. It is a really important issue. As the Cathaoirleach stated, the committee had carers in last year and that highlighted the difficulty. We get many people coming to my constituency office who are dealing with difficulties relating to carer's allowance and the means testing. It is important work that needs to be done in respect of carers and all means testing and how that works and impacts on people. I appreciate Ms Thyne taking the time to speak to us. She gave an example of the difficulties and intrusion relating to trying to access a simple basic payment of €11 that comes down to €4 if one adds in all the hours of caring. She probably underestimated the number of hours on top of that. Through engagement with people who are appealing a rejection of their carer's allowance application, I am aware of the intrusiveness of the process. It absolutely needs to be addressed.

I have questions relating to the report. What is the overall cost of the means testing? That cost includes those employed by the Department of Social Protection to do all this work. What is the overall cost?

There is another important aspect we need to look at which really upsets people. One section of the report refers to the once-only principle for data gathering and that there may be just one document or one connection with the Department of Social Protection. The important part of this is the "do not review" provision. Many people can find it really upsetting when there are constant reviews on whether circumstances have changed, while knowing from the evidence and from the medical evidence that circumstances are never going to change. That can be really upsetting for people. What can we do on that?

Reference was made to costings. If it was reviewed or abolished the cost would be in the region of €1.2 billion. Have the witnesses ever done a costing for a situation whereby everybody was to withdraw their services in caring for their relatives, which obviously is not going to happen. What would the cost be if the State was to move in and actually replicate that service? Has there ever been a costing done on that? I would say it could be massively more substantial than the €1.2 billion it would cost to remove the means testing.

I appreciate the witnesses taking the time to come and talk to us today.