Willie Penrose (Westmeath, Labour)

I see him arriving. I wish him well in his new portfolio and congratulate him on his appointment. I look forward to constructive dialogue commencing with this motion tonight.

I move:

That Dáil Éireann:

—noting that it is almost 12 months since the Joint Committee on Social and Family Affairs published its major report, The Position of Full-Time Carers;

—regretting the failure of the Government to take action to implement the key recommendations contained in the report;

—conscious of the fact that the CSO has produced figures showing that almost 150,000 people in Ireland provide unpaid help for a family member or friend with a disability; and

—aware that carers are saving the State huge expenditure that would arise should those being cared for have to be provided with institutional care;

calls on the Government to recognise the value of the carers' contribution by:

—the abolition of the means test for the carer's allowance;

—the introduction of a comprehensive system of assessment of the supports and services required by carers;

—a significant shift of resources to home care subvention;

—the introduction of a respite care grant for all carers;

—the development of a national strategy for carers.

I wish to share my time with Deputies Stagg, Moynihan-Cronin and Lynch.

Almost a year has elapsed since the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Social and Family Affairs launched its report, The Position of Full-Time Carers. Since that time the Government has done nothing of consequence to improve the position for carers who, as I have said repeatedly, are some of the best people in our society. Carers are the unsung heroes of Irish society. It is time we acknowledge their role and begin compensating them for the demanding work they are asked to do.

Figures published by the Central Statistics Office last March show that there are almost 150,000 people in Ireland providing unpaid help for a family member or friend with a disability or health problem. The person being cared for could be a child with a physical or mental disability, a stroke victim or an incapacitated elderly relative. In many cases this unpaid care is being provided 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. In some cases a person may be caring for more than one dependant. Providing the level of care required can take a huge physical and emotional toll on the provider. The demand for care can be constant. Significant physical effort is often required, for example, in lifting or moving the patient. Carers can find themselves confined to the house almost as much as the person for whom they care. There is no guaranteed time off, no holidays, no weekend breaks and, in most cases, no financial compensation. Frequently the persons providing the care are themselves elderly. There cannot be a single Deputy who does not have a list of cases of carers enduring significant personal hardship because of their circumstances. I have been deeply moved by some of the letters I received from carers. I have volumes of them, but I will read two samples. The first states:

Dear Mr. Penrose,

As a carer and member of a support group I read with interest your report and recommendations of the joint committee. I am especially interested in a submission which calls for the abolition of means testing for carers. As it is almost a year since the report was passed I feel the decision should be acted on immediately. Could you please inform me of any future progress of same?

The second letter states:

Dear William Penrose,

My name is — and I live at — with my mother, my husband and my three very young children. I am sure you are a busy man so I will keep this very short if I can. I have applied for carer's allowance and in the end I simply gave up not because I won the Lotto but because I could not keep up with the endless paperwork they requested. They even subjected my frail mother to an exam by a Department doctor as they would not accept or believe her doctor of 20 years that she is in need of full-time care. My brother and sister both work full time so all her care fell to me as I am at home with my kids. The thing is my kids are not the reason I cannot do the full-time computer course offered in a particular place with FÁS. They would give me the money for the child care but I have no one to look after my Mum. I feel like I cannot move on with my life until her needs are met.

My choices are to put her in a nursing home and let the people's Government foot the bill or pay for full-time care which I cannot afford or leave her alone and hope nothing will happen and if something does happen she will end up in a particular hospital costing the Government thousands of euros every week. I feel I am stuck and not recognised by the Government. If I got my, as I see it, just reward for all the care I provided I might not feel so stuck. Please do your best to abolish the means testing for all us unseen and unheard carers in Ireland. We do the work for the Government. We just want to be recognised.

These are very small cross-samples of the letters I receive.

According to official figures from the Department of Social and Family Affairs less than 15% of the county's 150,000 carers qualify for the carer's allowance. This is largely because the means test requirements are so severe that only those on the lowest of incomes qualify, a topic I will deal with in more detail later. These carers save the State the high costs that would arise if those being cared for had to seek residential care, but they get little or no recognition from the State. Among the submissions made to me as Chairman of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Social and Family Affairs, there were over 18 written submissions and many oral submissions by the Carers Association, Carers Alliance and numerous other organisations. The one point on which they focused was the lack of State recognition for the work they do for their relatives.

If there are 150,000 carers, it is safe to assume that there are close to 150,000 receiving care. Taking an average of just €500 per week — Dublin Deputies will laugh at that sum but let us take an average — for institutional care, the cost to the Exchequer of providing residential care for those currently being cared for at home would be close to €4 billion per annum. Very few nursing homes provide care at that price. That does not even consider the capital costs that would be required to provide places for 150,000 people. The Labour Party believes it is time to end the shameful neglect of the country's carers. We want to see a package of measures that will recognise and in some way, not even fully, reward the role played by carers.

When I launched the report, on which there was unanimous agreement within the all-party Joint Committee on Social and Family Affairs, I stated on the committee's behalf: "The timescale of implementation is as important to us as is the content of our recommendations and we do not want to see any dust gathering on what we have proposed here and about which there is no substantive disagreement or controversy." Deputy Ring will no doubt relay his views later.

A year on, none of the committee's recommendations has been implemented. The only response from the outgoing Minister, Deputy Coughlan, was to claim that supporting carers was a priority of the Government, and then to do nothing of substance on the recommendations of the joint committee. The outgoing Minister, in a response to inquiries about the actions, if any, being taken on the committee's recommendations, replied to me in June 2004 with a classic, clichéd set of responses which were as disheartening as they were disappointing in tone and content. For example, on the recommendation of the joint committee that the means test for carers be abolished, the Minister responded that its abolition would cost in the region of €180 million per annum and that: "It is questionable whether it would be the best use of such resources in the light of other competing demands and the Department of Social and Family Affairs is aware that there are differing views on this issue."

I would like to spend a little time analysing the former Minister's response on the issue and I hope the new Minister does not deliver this type of clichéd response on the issue of abolishing the means test. First, the Minister claims that it would cost €180 million per annum, a very small figure if all those receiving care were to go into institutional care at a cost of €4 billion per annum. It is small beer but absolutely vital to the people providing care. She did not indicate whether this was a gross or a net figure. Is it net of the substantial savings that would accrue if the machinery of means testing were abolished? Means testing is extremely expensive to carry out, particularly in Ireland where there are different forms of such testing, and it uses up large resources in terms of people and time.

There are 21,000 carers who qualify for payment — some of them do not qualify in full — and they receive a paltry €139. Is the new Minister aware that, from the date they apply, it takes 15 weeks for them to discover if they qualify? That is an absolute scandal. It is not good enough and he would want to shake matters up. If the means test were abolished, that nonsense would come to an end.

Let us assume the bald figure of €180 million to which the former Minister referred is a net figure and let us put it in an appropriate context. Figures provided by the Central Statistics Office in its Census 2002 publication, volume 10, on disability and carers reveal that the total unpaid care given by all carers in the State is almost 2,962,102 hours per week. If these voluntary carers were paid for their unpaid time at a rate of €1.17 per hour — one fifth of the minimum wage — the aggregate cost would be approximately €180 million per annum. These carers do not get paid for this time they spend looking after their relatives or friends. However, if the State were to abolish means testing at an aggregate cost of €180 million, it would still equate to slave wages for carers' unpaid hours.

The former Minister stated "it is questionable whether it would be the best use of such resources in the light of other competing demands". What are these demands and what is more important than looking after people who care for others 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year? The former Minister claimed that "supporting carers in our society has been a priority of the Government since 1997". Is it a priority of the Government? Is it necessary for one to cite a litany of alternative expenditures by this right wing Government which have been criticised by friend and foe alike as utterly wasteful? One need look no further than earlier today when a proposal to amend certain regulations will result in an increase in the amount of money available to the horse and greyhound industries to a phenomenal sum in excess of €500 million.

The former Minister, Deputy Coughlan, stated the "Department of Social and Family Affairs is aware there are differing views on this issue". Who, apart from people in her Department or the mandarins in the Department of Finance, provided those views? Did they come from the former Minister herself? The all-party committee I have the honour of chairing was unanimous in its support of the abolition of means testing. The new Minister should ask the Carers Association, Care Alliance, the various health boards and the many individuals interested in this issue such as the two women from Kildare and south Kerry who contacted me recently about where the committee stands. He should forget about the different views. There is one unanimous view that people should be given some recognition.

Most of the submissions to the joint committee called for the abolition of means testing. The Mercer Report on the Financing of Long-Term Care commissioned by the Department gives several cogent arguments against means testing and in favour of universality. I draw the attention of the House to the views of the joint committee on means testing. The committee pointed out that such testing is regarded by carers as degrading, stressful and extremely complicated. That was before it took 16 or 17 weeks for applicants to receive word on whether they qualified for payment. If any Member has doubts about this, I urge him or her to examine the basic application procedures they would have to fulfil if they suddenly found themselves in the position of caring for a relative or friend. If Deputies did so, they would support the motion tabled by the Labour Party. They would vote with their feet tomorrow night. The new Minister, Deputy Brennan, has an opportunity to put a stamp on his new Department by accepting the thrust of the motion in conjunction with the heads of the carers Bill we are proud to table.

I have questioned and criticised the outgoing Minister for Social and Family Affairs for her failure to take any substantive action to progress the implementation of the joint committee's report. I regret having had to do so and I wish her well in her new portfolio. I am familiar with the area of agriculture, having spent eight or nine years as my party's spokesperson on it. However, what I find really dispiriting in terms of obtaining a more just deal for full-time carers is that we previously had a Minister who would not do the job and we are now faced with one who does not appear to want the job. Despite my reservations, I call on Deputy Brennan to surprise us all, particularly the Taoiseach who, in the Minister's own words, "shafted" him, by fighting at Cabinet with the same intensity he showed in fighting to retain a ministerial position. I admire the Minister's guts and I find an echo of his behaviour in myself. I would fight to the bitter end for something in which I believed. In the area from which I come, we fight for what we believe in. The Minister must fight for resources for carers and for other seriously disadvantaged groups.

See this speech in context