John Halligan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

My sister is a carer. She cared for my mother for seven years and has been taking care of my father for eight years. Unfortunately - or fortunately for us - most of my family work and are unable to help her out, but we know she works 24 hours a day because my father needs that level of care. In light of the work she does and the hours she puts in, I have often thought that if she worked anywhere else in the world her work would be classified as slave labour. There would be uproar and understandable outrage that people should work so hard for so little. That is the salient point in this debate. Whatever small amount of money we are taking away, to do so is unforgivable.

I have spoken to many carers in both Waterford and Dublin. Next week there will be a Private Members' Bill on carers, which we hope the Minister will support. What is deeply upsetting for many carers is not that the Minister has taken the money away but that her Department would sit down and contemplate attacking the most vulnerable and hard-working people in Ireland today. If she speaks to carers, as she must do because all of us have done so, she will see they are deeply upset. I say that rather than "annoyed" because we are all annoyed at things now and again. Carers are deeply upset that members of the Minister's Department would sit down with her and even think about making this cut. As one who sees what a carer does, I make an appeal. I am sure other people present also have carers in their families, but I see what my sister does. She is very small, weighs only about seven stone but I know what she has to do 24 hours a day with my father, and what she had to do for my mother before she died. What upset her was not that the Minister took the money away but that she sat down and thought about doing so.

I will leave it at that because other people wish to speak. I appeal to the Minister on this, above all the cuts she has made, because it concerns the people who work hardest in society, some of them 24 hours a day. My sister has to get up five or six times every night. I did the work one weekend to give her a break and did not bother going to bed the second night because I had to turn my father in the bed so often, a consequence of the illness he has. Carers do not deserve to have any kind of cut to their grant. In fact they could do with an increase because of the work they do.

See this speech in context