Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I would like to explain a couple of aspects of this matter. When cash contributions come in through the PRSI system, the social insurance fund pays for non-means-tested benefits like the contributory pension and jobseeker's benefit. In order to have a benefit at one end, one has to be paying in at the other end. The only fair and just way to do what the Deputy is suggesting, while ensuring it is acceptable from an actuarial point of view, would be require carers to pay PRSI contributions. I am not sure that is the right way to do it. In my mind, the right way to do it would be to allow people to continue to draw down carer's allowance for a number of months after they have stopped caring. That is a much simpler way of doing the same thing.

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