Eoin Hayes (Dublin Bay South, Social Democrats)

I move amendment No. 5:

In page 7, between lines 29 and 30, to insert the following: “(3) The Minister shall prepare and lay a report, with a timeline, before both Houses of the Oireachtas on abolishing the means test for carer’s allowance and that the report shall be presented to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Social Protection within 6 months of the passing of this Act.”.

The amendment concerns a report on a commitment in the programme for Government on abolishing the means test for carers. I am somewhat concerned by some conflating information I have received on this. When it was discussed in the Dáil Chamber last week, Deputy O'Reilly said about 53,000 people have now been excluded from the means test. According to the Department of public expenditure, the data the Minister gave about a month previously referred to a figure of 30,000. I want to get a sense of what abolishing the means test would look like from an expenditure perspective, the number of people who would be affected by it and how the Minister plans to deal with it under the programme for Government.