Professor Mary Murphy:

Perhaps big-bang change is not entirely accurate. However, in this discussion it is important not to lose sight of the fact that if the payments stay in context of the Department of Social Protection and income support payments, they are seen as anti poverty measures and income supports. They are required to be designed that way, with a host of other criteria that are about targeting money, maintaining work incentives and other objectives of the Department of Social Protection.

The idea of refocusing a payment to socially valued care is that it would be taken away from being an income support, so the payment becomes one of right for people, once they are doing care work. It is a totally different ballgame, so to speak, by taking it from one system where is understood as an income support and moving the payment to a different Department where the value is placed on the caring activity. I would not like this point to get lost in the more minute detail of how the present system could be amended to make it better. Clearly, that can always be done, but the shift would allow us to appraise how we approach the concept of care from a different perspective