Ms Catherine Cox:

Going back to the question as to whether the Minister and the Department are engaging, I would say that they are. The Minister set up a cross-departmental group to look at the impact of means testing on carer's allowance. We will be making a presentation to that group in the next two weeks in the context of the participation income scheme and what that might look like. A really good paper on that was compiled by us in conjunction with Maynooth University. Members of the Regional Group, including Deputy Naughten, support the introduction of a participation income and what that would look like. The latter would allow us to get over many of the problems we are talking about in regard to the system of means testing. It would also put care work where it should be, namely as a valued contribution to our society. That is positive.

The other question was on whether the current system is sustainable. No, it is not. There are 500,000 carers. Many reach burn-out because they are not getting the supports they need - not just financial supports but also services, such as health services. People are obliged to pay for therapies privately because they cannot get them otherwise.

Have things improved? Yes, but many family carers are not yet feeling that.

On another point raised by Mr. Musgrave, as well as the issue of family carers wanting to take on employment outside the home there is another social welfare rule which completely eliminates people working outside the home for more hours than they do. At the moment, if somebody works three full days a week and work seven hours each day, he or she can still get social welfare for the other two days. However, if that person decides to work two hours a day, say, for five or seven days a week he or she could not do it. Such an arrangement would work really well to attract people to our care sector, where we are urgently crying out for home care workers, for example. A simple solution would be to change the social welfare rule from days worked to hours worked as it would encourage more people to work in the home care sector and, in turn, support family carers in the home.