Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the speakers who have spoken to this important motion, brought forward by my colleague, Deputy Penrose, the Labour Party spokesperson. He has a track record in this area. Everyone in this House can see the passion he has shown about this issue. I assure everyone in the House that Deputy Penrose has spoken up for carers for decades and, indeed, it is a topic to which he regularly returns in our party meetings. The Labour Party is delighted to put forward this motion.

The motion goes hand in glove with the motion that was before the House last night about home help hours and home care packages. The motions are first cousins of each other in the way we need to re-look at both of them.

To be frank, carers and the provision of home care packages and assisted hours help to save the State hundreds of millions of euro. We must re-evaluate these matters as we are getting things on the cheap with carers. I am grateful to Family Carers Ireland and Care Alliance Ireland, members of which are here, for the information they continuously provide for us to update our knowledge of this very important area.

One of our aims in bringing forward this Labour Party motion was to give carers a voice. All too often, people caring for a loved one do so in isolation. Much of the time people around here exist in a bubble. It is important, therefore, that we inform ourselves. It is also important to give people a voice, as we are doing. Given everything we have heard, we have been very successful in relating some stories of carers and getting into the nitty-gritty of the issues faced by them. This is only one step on the road to providing carers with the recognition and assistance they need. The collective actions we take from now on are most important.

Many people do not even consider themselves to be carers, as they see themselves as sons or daughters, siblings or parents who are looking after those whom they love. Practically every one of us was raised in a context of everyday care for others. Our parents or guardians looked after us as children and we reciprocate that action as we grow. My nine year old daughter, Aoibhe, was here today and I always jokingly ask her if she will mind me when I am old. Am I really joking when I ask this question? There is intergenerational care; caring for others is at the heart of what it is to be a human being.

Sometimes a person's care needs move beyond the ordinary and become frequent and more fundamental. When we speak about carers, we are referring to people who work daily to ensure someone else can meet his or her basic needs or function in daily life. People become carers in different ways; sometimes it is because of an accident or the onset of a condition which requires care, while in other cases the process is gradual, perhaps because of a health issue as a result of a physical disability, dementia or something else. That is why it is so important that as a society we and the State recognise the existence of carers as a distinct and unique group.

I will not reiterate all parts of the motion, but the bottom line is that carers need the State to support them, not replace them, and provide practical assistance to meet their own needs. It is as simple as that, but sometimes it seems that we lose sight of this basic objective. Too much emphasis is placed by the State on application forms, means testing and waiting lists, as we also heard last night. We all know that the State must manage limited resources and distribute them as fairly as possible, but it has gone too far. I submitted a parliamentary question that was answered yesterday. I was contacted by a number of people who told me that the number of inspections related to carer's allowance had increased rapidly this year. I asked the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection for the number, but, amazingly, the reply was that it could not provide the statistics. That makes me nervous. It is deeply worrying as the fact that a Department cannot provide statistics for its own reviews indicates that it is not functioning properly.

Why do we have a means test for full-time carers? We know that regardless of their means, every full-time carer provides a valuable service that would cost the State several times more to provide than the carer's allowance of €219. With full-time carers providing care for an average of nearly 45 hours a week, someone on the national minimum wage would have to be paid €441 for those 45 hours of work, even before taking account of employers' social insurance, materials, management and all other costs. It could easily cost three or four times the level of carer's allowance to provide professional care workers. Clearly, it would be more cost-effective to support family carers. Why, therefore, do we still maintain a means test that throws up administrative and cost barriers that may make it impossible for some to take up the role, as mentioned ad nauseamhere?

There is room for us to reconsider what we regard as appropriate in this state. There is no need to be so strict about stopping people from accessing financial assistance. We must ensure everything is done right, but we do not have to continue the manner in which we are doing this. As the population ages and care work becomes even more commonplace, we must consider whether we are making the decision to engage in full-time care even more challenging. That would be bad for the taxpayer, as it would cost the State more. Outside the fact that it is wrong, it would be financially insane. Let us change it.

The State should consider introducing a minimum income guarantee for everybody in the State in order that people would know that the decision to care for a loved one would not leave them without an income. We have serious challenges in the country in how we treat carers and must change the way we think about the matter. That is why we need a new national carer strategy with a long-term perspective. As a society, we must make a strong and unambiguous statement on solidarity and appreciation of the work done by carers of all ages. We need to say to carers loud and clear that they are not alone and that we really cherish them. As a decent and democratic society, we should commit to working together to ensure the people who need care will receive all the support we can give and that people who provide care will be be valued and assisted. We must also ensure carers receive paid leave; five days of paid leave would not be too much to ask. By 2022 we will have to provide it under the European Union work-life balance directive; therefore, we may as well skip ahead and do it now.

I am grateful to all of the Deputies who have spoken in favour of the Labour Party's motion. I acknowledge that the Government has recognised the valuable contribution of carers, although at times the response was a little defensive and we could argue the toss on many of the stated facts. I also acknowledge the contribution made by the other Government representative who acknowledged that we had to look at the matter in a different way. There are grounds for a renewed cross-party consensus on it. There are some issues on which we must jump a little above politics, this Chamber and the bubble of Leinster House; this is one of them. Perhaps the motion will stimulate us into pushing forward with this agenda that we in the Labour Party want to pursue, with others, in supporting carers by practical means. We can make changes not over one year but a number of years to make their lives better, support them, make them more financially stable and put them in a position where they would be able to look after loved ones in a fairer way. The State supports do not go far enough and we have outlined our reasons. The existing system of State supports is too rigid, with too many rules and requirements that unnecessarily restrict people's ability to balance care work with studies or paid work. Too many carers are suffering burnout, as I have witnessed, and serious ill-health caused by the stress and strain of their care work. We need to implement proposals.I hope the Government will accept the need to have a deeper national dialogue on the issue of carers and care work. Regardless of its amendment which I know will be defeated because the motion has the support needed to be passed, I hope the Government will facilitate that national dialogue in the coming months. If it does not, we, in the Labour Party, will ensure it will have no choice in the matter.

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