Ms Clodagh Whelan:

There is a broader issue about how we as a society value care work. Certainly for people living with dementia, whether they live at home or in a long-term care facility, the care you receive is completely dictated by a healthcare assistant. It is that one-to-one relationship where the person supports you to have a shower. That is the person upholding your human rights and dignity. It is extremely skilled work, and on how we as a society look at that work, it is certainly not valued in terms of pay, travel time and career progression. It is skilled work, and there are care workers who do not have a career path. We would suggest that we need to look into that. Are there supervisory roles? Could they become subject matter experts in aspects of care, all the while knowing that their pay and conditions can improve incrementally?

The Deputy mentioned the person who is struggling financially caring for their mother, who is living with dementia. That is something that is important to look at, and that we know from our research with Family Carers Ireland. It was based on 2022 data that at least 50% of family carers of people living with dementia were struggling financially. We had our own research in 2023 that bore that out again. For a lot of carers, the stress of caring is being intensified by that financial burden. Something that is really worrying for us as an organisation is that we know that family carers can be isolated and lonely. They can have poor mental health. Over 20% of them told us that they were cutting back on socialising or seeing family and friends. They actually call those expenses non-essential but we would view them as utterly essential for their own wellbeing.

To go back to what Mr. Dunne said, if you take that analogy of putting on your own oxygen mask first, the family carer needs to be able to have those social outlets in order to fulfil their caring role.