Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As the Minister of State is aware, it can cost up to €2,000 per week to provide care to an older person in a residential nursing home in the public sector. It costs the State about €200 per week for a carer, who is, more often than not, an immediate relative, to provide round the clock care for a parent, aunt or uncle in his or her home through the provision of the carer's allowance. This State officially denies that basic level of support to emigrants who return home in a parent's time of need to look after the people who took care of them when they were growing up. Many returning emigrants, because they do not satisfy the Department's habitual residency clause, are not officially entitled to receive any recognition or financial support from the State to provide the care they feel duty bound to undertake. The Minister of State is aware that they do not qualify for a carer's payment if they have not been resident in the State in the previous two years. The local community welfare officer also appears to be prevented from providing any support to help a family make ends meet and to recognise the role of the carer under such circumstances.

The habitual residency clause, as the House will be aware, was introduced for very good reasons in May 2004. Nobody wants to see opportunistic exploitation of the social welfare system. This week, I came across the case of a woman who does not meet the habitual residency requirements and who is returning to Drogheda to look after her mother who is awaiting an organ transplant. This demands a review of this system and that we insist on a process that takes into account the reality of life and the need for the social protection system to respond in a humane manner that respects the dignity of the carer and the people for whom care is provided. We should identify a better way. There may be no more than 100 such people and perhaps even fewer who experience this issue in any given year. At a small cost, we could and should provide urgent assistance to families who most need help in a time of crisis and emotional strain. Where specific sets of circumstances apply and where the returning emigrant is in some cases the carer of last resort for an ill or infirm relative, I urge the Department to take a less dogmatic and more sympathetic view of the plight of carers who are emigrants returning to care for an aged, ill or infirm relative.

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