Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I take the point made about the domiciliary care allowance because then a person is assessed as to whether he or she qualifies for a disability payment or not. The age of 16 is quite young for a person to get the full payment and there is a conversation to be had on that. The way it is at the minute is that a person is moved on to the disability payment at the age of 16. If a person does not quality for the disability payment then that is it and payments finish at 16 years. The question is should a person get it to 18 and that requires a conversation. Some people agree with extending the age but some people will not and it just depends. I am happy to look at these things. I have done a good few things over the last few budgets but I cannot do everything and we do look at all these things.

The only thing is that if a carer is older and he or she has not been working, then the carer's pension will make a big difference. The provision will apply to people who have ceased caring but who, having reached 70 years or more, could not get a pension. Whenever I bring in this legislation, such people can re-apply and see whether they can receive the pension. There will be a lot of people who will feel very relieved by the provision because before this, they did not qualify because of their partner's income.

Deputy Durkan also asked about the carer's allowance. It is an income support for full-time care and attention. A carer can get the allowance for up to nine weeks after the person being cared for goes into a centre full-time. I see what the Deputy is saying but in trying to help specific cases you can sometimes, as the Deputy well knows, open the floodgates and we want to target resources at the people who need them most.