Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the people to the Visitors Gallery, many of whom are family carers. I thank Members of other parties who have expressed support for this motion, which I believe will be passed by the Dáil tomorrow afternoon; I certainly hope so. We tabled the motion to get action. As did Deputy Penrose, who spoke so passionately about the cases he knows, I attended a regional meeting in Limerick on 29 April. There were hundreds of family carers there in absolute desperation but who had managed to make arrangements and get away to attend the meeting in order that we would have an understanding of their plight. They wrote down five priorities and one that struck me was that they want to move from understanding and sympathy to action. That is what we want to achieve through this motion and, therefore, I welcome the support of others.

I want to see Government action on this, because what it has committed to is minimal. We are coming up to the budgetary cycle and we want to see real commitments in the budget to address these issues. I reiterate what Deputy Joan Collins said: it is much more important to give carers a decent quality of life and income than to cut taxes. Whatever priorities we have in this country, let us prioritise carers.

In the short time available to me, I want to talk about two matters of justice, namely, the income disregard and the fact that it is taxable. Many other social welfare payments are not taxable and there are many income disregards that do not apply to carer's allowance. We want to see the income disregard increase and the introduction of other measures to allow the many carers who do not get carer's allowance to get into the net, which is important.

In the long term, we want to see a plan to abolish the means test. These people are workers and they work an awful lot more than 35 hours per week; in some cases, they are working round the clock. We heard harrowing stories of the tough role for those caring for children who wake every half hour at night. Another person who spoke at that meeting, who I know, has for years been caring for an adult son and gets absolutely no money because of the means test. It is not enough to sympathise; we absolutely have to move to action.

I will refer to a few things that have perhaps not got as much attention as others. The first is the issue of increasing the hours that carers can work or study to 18.5 hours per week. If a carer spends 35 hours per week caring, although most spend an awful lot more, there is no reason they should not be allowed to work during the hours that, for example, the child is at school or the adult is in day care. That recommendation comes directly from the Family Carers Ireland pre-budget submission, which many of us attended this morning. I thank that organisation for the detail it provided us with.

Family Carers Ireland was very strong on the issue of the postcode lottery, whereby a carer in one area will get respite but a carer in another will not, or will get a housing adaptation grant in one area but have to wait two or three years in another. That is wrong; people should have these things as a right. We deliberately framed our motion in a rights-based context and referred to United Nations conventions and so on. We need to start looking at this as issues of right, not things for which people must constantly fight, on top of all the other things in their lives they must do.

I want to raise a specific issue from my constituency. The St. Gabriel's Centre, which caters for people with disabilities, has through fundraising built a beautiful respite home at the edge of Limerick. It serves a wide region of not just the mid-west but further. While I acknowledge the HSE has given the centre some funding to manage, the St. Gabriel's Centre does not have the money to open the respite centre. It would make such a difference to many families in my part of the country.

However, this motion is about carers in all parts of the country, who do so much in looking after their loved ones and in saving the State money, at great damage to their own health and well-being. The do it because these people are their loved ones, but that is not enough any more. We have to respond. We are coming up to a budget and we need definite commitments to action. That is why we have tabled this motion.

I thank my constituency colleague, Deputy O'Dea, who said that Fianna Fáil will support the motion, which I welcome. That means that with the support of other Opposition parties, we will get this motion through tomorrow. We want to see Government action quickly and in the longer term, we want to see the means test abolished.

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