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

The Government acknowledges the crucial role family carers play and is fully committed to supporting carers in that role. This commitment is recognised in both the programme for Government and the national carers strategy. Carer's allowance is a means-tested payment, made to people who are providing full-time care and attention to elderly people or people with disabilities and whose income falls below certain limits.

The principal conditions for receipt of the allowance are that full-time care and attention is required and being provided and that the means test which applies is satisfied. The means test is one of the least onerous in the social protection system. For a single person, €332.50 of gross weekly income is disregarded in the calculation of means. The equivalent for someone who is married, in a civil partnership or cohabiting is €665 of combined gross weekly income. A married couple with two children could have weekly earnings of €1,135 net of PRSI, union and superannuation contributions and still qualify for the lowest rate of carer's allowance. In other words, a family earning €59,000 per annum would meet the eligibility criteria.

Considerable improvements have been introduced for carers in recent years. In budget 2016, the carer's support grant, which is payable without a means test, was increased to €1,700. Other measures benefitting carers include extending the period when carer's allowance can be paid following the death of a care recipient from six to 12 weeks. In addition to the Christmas bonus and the €5 increase in the weekly rate, budget 2017 introduced a measure that extends payment of carer's allowance for 12 weeks where the care recipient enters permanent residential care. Carer's benefit is available to employees who have to take time off to care full time. It can be paid for up to three years on foot of PRSI contributions and is not means tested.

There are no plans for a formal review of the qualification criteria for carer's allowance. Instead, specific measures will be considered as part of the budgetary process in line with the commitments in the programme for Government.

In order to ascertain and assess priorities within the sector, my Department actively engages with carers' representative groups and hosts an annual carers forum.

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