Mr. John Dunne:

To be honest that is why we are here. At the time we were drowned out in the protests. The committee knows the true story about Edmund Burke who gave a very inspirational speech to his electors in Bristol. He said: "I owe a duty to you to do what I think is in your best long-term interests, not what you are telling me you want." It is very inspiring until one realises he did not get elected until the next election. I will forward the speech to the committee.

On the issue of the respite care grant, having read Pat Leahy's book relatively recently, I sympathise with the Government in that it had backtracked the year before, and if it was to unravel again, I relate to all of that. However, it was disproportionate but I would be happy to acknowledge that I think the Minister has done a remarkable job given the various pressures that were on her. I have said it to her and I am happy to say it here today. Frankly, that was a miscalculation late in the day. It is interesting that each budget has used a slightly different process. The process in that budget was that everybody was kept in the dark in certain areas until almost the last minute and there was not enough time to assess the final gradations of decisions that were being made and that such an allowance was being taken off the list. They all got wiped out the following year so it did not really matter.

On the question of a child attending school during the day and a person losing his or her carer's allowance, that issue is buried somewhere in the presentation. That is an issue not only for education but for somebody going back to work. The Department says, not unreasonably, that if one is working full-time in the home providing care, how can one do the rest? For many carers, as a lifeline to sanity plus an assurance around their pension contributions, plus keeping in touch with a future where they might need to go back to work, the way they choose to spend the respite is in working. Historically, 19.5 hours was the magic trigger around community employment and there was a feeling on the part of the Department that it did not want to go near that. If the Department does not want to do it for everybody, it is obvious that where a carer is looking after a child who is in an institutional setting for a chunk of most days of the week, of course there is potential for that parent to go out and engage more fully, either in education or in the labour market, and we think that is worth looking at.

I refer to the education focus of carers. There is a limit to what one can do when one is caring but taking bereavements as a trigger, one of the first things one could say to a carer is: "It must be a great relief." If a member goes to a funeral, I would not advise him or her to use that phrase because the carer has willingly built his or her life around a relationship caring for somebody. There are bad days but it is not a great relief when that ends.

The carer gets six weeks grace. The wife of one of our board members died recently. He had to go into a nice new shiny Intreo office rather than the old labour exchange, queue and, when he reached the top of the line, say that his wife had died and he was there to discuss his options. It is a rough way to do it. Carers have six weeks to make the adjustment and we have been asking for a while what it would cost to pay the carer's allowance rather than the jobseeker's allowance for six months rather than six weeks. It would probably cost a few hundred euro per person, which is not a huge amount. The humanity that would bring to the process is worth considering.

On personal assistants, one could argue that family carers are an alternative. I am not being trite when I say that. We do not have much of a view on such assistants. We are certainly not against them but they are not a major feature of the caring relationship. Our position is similar on disability access.