Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Michael Moynihan and Deputy Brassil.

Fianna Fáil supports the extension of GP cards to all carers and will be supporting this Bill. The Bill proposes a modest extension of the GP card to an additional 14,000 carers and this will be very welcome to every single one of them. It is very much deserved. It is estimated that carers provide approximately 7 million care hours every week, saving the State approximately €10 billion in unpaid care every year.

We are all aware of the sacrifices families make while caring for their loved ones. This Bill goes some way towards recognising those sacrifices and supporting the individuals. We need to go further than this Bill, however. We need to address the 6,500 older people waiting on home care and home help at present. That represents an increase of 19% just since last December. In the west and north west, the issue is particularly bad, with targets missed by more than 100,000 care hours just in January, February and March of this year. We must increase home care supports if we are to meet the demand.

We need to ensure that all carers receive a GP card. Family Carers Ireland has pointed out that even with tonight's measure, there are still carers who can be identified by the State as carers who will not be covered. I have tabled an amendment to address this. We will talk about it on Committee Stage.

Those in receipt of the carer's support grant, formerly known as the respite care grant, and who are not in receipt of the other payments will not receive the GP card based on this Bill. The good news is that the money should be in place. It has already been set aside to allow the extension to those in receipt of the respite care grant or carer's support grant. As the Minister of State knows, the Minister, Deputy Harris, stated some time ago when he initially started talking about this that €11 million would be set aside. It turns out that when the Department calculated its numbers, significantly less than €11 million was required. I understand that approximately €2.5 million will be required on foot of this Bill for those in receipt of the carer's allowance and less than half a million euro will be required to cover those in receipt of carer's benefit. The information we have is that the provisions in this Bill will cost approximately €3 million. Critically, we were told that approximately €11 million had been set aside when the idea was initially floated. The obvious question is whether it was the initial intention, when the idea was floated, that those in receipt of the carer's support grant would already be covered. The Government will be required to run the numbers in the Departments of Health and Public Expenditure and Reform. I have taken a look at some preliminary figures. It seems extending the GP card to those on the carer's allowance, which we support, to those in receipt of the carer's benefit, which we support, and to those in receipt of the respite care grant or carer's support grant who are not already in receipt of one of the other two grants could be done and that the cost still would be significantly lower than €11 million. We will be supporting this Bill. It is a move in the right direction. It recognises the important work of carers. It will come as very welcome help for the 14,000 carers. I would like to talk to the Minister of State about extending coverage to the other group also.

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