Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)

I am very pleased to have an opportunity to raise the very important issue of the carer's allowance in the Chamber this evening. Everybody would agree that it is impossible to overstate the huge importance and the value of the role of carers in Irish society. In particular, I refer to the role they play and the great social value of the work they do in keeping families together, binding communities and keeping people with disabilities, people with medical problems and older people in their own homes, and helping them avoid the fate of being consigned to nursing homes and surrounded by strangers, even though these may be health care professionals. People deserve to live in a family environment and should be afforded the dignity of availing of this in their twilight years.

Carers also have a very important monetary impact on Irish society. There are 161,000 family carers in this country at present. It is estimated that they contribute the monetary equivalent of €2.5 billion to the economy each year through the amount of hours they invest in caring for family members. We cannot afford to ignore that.

Up until a few years ago, it was fairly easy to access the carer's allowance with the requisite certification and letters from a local GP. Anybody with an essential medical need qualified and was entitled to avail of the allowance for a family member to look after him or her. That is now not the case and I have met constituents who applied for the allowance but were refused, even though they had a significant medical again. They applied again and were refused on appeal. This is not satisfactory because there clearly has been a very significant shift in attitude in the Department of Social Protection. It has not been explained and has not been adopted as an official position. My hunch is that the Government is under severe pressure for resources and I think that a decision has been taken to tighten up significantly on the carer's allowance. The policy appears to be to refuse applications almost universally when they come in. This is simply not adequate. The least people deserve is an acknowledgement from the Government that the policy has changed, that the funds are not there and that the carer's allowance is now much more difficult to access.

I would like to highlight one case in my constituency which sums up the current situation. A woman who I shall call Mary - it is not her real name - cares for her aunt on a full-time basis. She is a full-time carer and her aunt has nine conditions, namely, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, obstructive sleep apnoea, hypertension, asthma, fluid retention and carpal tunnel syndrome. I have met her in her house and she is severely debilitated. She is unable to care for herself. Due to the carpal tunnel syndrome, she has no power in her hands. She has the use of one baby finger and a baby finger and index finger on her other hand. She cannot even make herself a cup of tea. She is taking a huge amount of medicine every day, but she cannot administer that medicine, so her niece is caring for her full-time. She is in receipt of social welfare but has absolutely no assistance from the State in caring for her aunt.

I do not believe it is acceptable that when this woman applied for the carer's allowance she was refused on the basis that her aunt did not fulfil the medical requirements. That is ludicrous, so she applied a second time but was refused again. On the second occasion, her GP, who I know well, wrote a letter pleading with the deciding officer and explained that this woman is not capable of caring for herself and that she would be destitute without full-time care from her niece. She was refused by an unknown deciding officer somewhere in the midlands who based his decision on the fact that she did not meet the medical requirements. This is catastrophic. It is unacceptable. It makes me angry and upset to think that people who are in dire need of assistance to enable them keep people in the community and not surrender them to the State and to State institutions - which is the other alternative and a far more costly one from an economic point of view - cannot be afforded the dignity they deserve by the Government. Our priorities are all wrong. It is extraordinary to see a Deputy from the other side of the House take a principled position on stag hunting, which has no bearing on his constituency and in my view has nothing to do with principle, while at the same time he is willing to stand over this type of abuse by the State of people who are in dire need. I ask the Minister of State to convey that message to the Minister.

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