Séamus Brennan (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)

The Deputy did so. He posed a few awkward questions last night. He never gave me an easy one yet.

We must work out some details but we have provided €57 million to do this. Most carers are on some form of welfare, whether they are on pensions, lone parent's allowance or other allowances. As the Deputy knows — he brought the matter to my attention — the position previously was that if somebody wanted to become a carer, we, in effect, took away that person's social welfare and instead provided a carer's allowance. What will happen is that the carer will keep the social welfare payment and will be paid an allowance equivalent to a half rate carer's allowance. That is not to pay carers for caring but it is the beginning of the process.

This is a substantial reform in terms of moving away from simply viewing carer's allowance as an income support. It allows a carer to keep his or her social welfare but acknowledges that he or she is doing the caring, that the State will contribute towards the work and that it appreciates the work. Some 18,000 people are involved, who will be entitled to an additional €100 per week — a person on a €200 per week pension will receive €300.

This is the beginning. I look forward to working with the carers' organisations to develop a strategy for carers. As we move towards that strategy, those organisations have impressed on me the argument that carers should not be seen as people who just need income support but as people who do a job for which they must receive support. Caring feeds into the entire health service and takes the pressure off it. Another small change being made is that recipients of carer's allowance or benefit who previously received illness benefit or jobseeker's benefit will revert to that payment at the same rate as previously paid, if that is more beneficial to them.

Government, or any kind of office, is about choices. The choice I made was not that easy. I considered removing the means test. I began by wanting to do that but instead I produced a €107 million package, the largest ever, for carers. To do it in the way I have described was much fairer and more urgent. Whatever the future of the means test in the long term, it is a subject to which we can return. I do not have an ideological bent in this regard other than that, in general, I will try to focus taxpayers' funds where they are needed.

In one way, Deputy Penrose is probably correct. My officials advise me that failing the means test financially is not what is keeping people from caring. Very few people fail the means test. However, they do not apply because they do not meet the other condition, which is that they must be available to provide full-time care and attention. There are not many millionaires available to provide full-time care and attention. This is why I am mystified at the cost of removing the test, which seems to clash with my previous statement. Extreme complications arise with regard to domiciliary care allowances. Only half of the cost of €140 million is related to carer's allowance. There is a knock-on effect with regard to domiciliary care allowances, which cost a further €70 million to €80 million. This was the complication which in the end persuaded me not to make this change. I do not believe many extremely well-off people will become full-time carers as they are more likely to hire someone to support them. We end up falling back substantially on people on lower incomes who do the caring. That is why I focused the measure in this way.

Obviously, I must reject the amendment. Deputy Stanton is correct that it is a type of pro forma amendment which must be put down to allow discussion. The Deputies did not intend to put it down in this way, and they never intended me to accept it.

See this speech in context