Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Connolly for her comprehensive and eminently reasonable motion on the provision of adequate respite care services.

This motion lays bare the cruel situation in which many family carers find themselves and asks that an adequate and sustainable service is put in place. It also very reasonably asks that all respite beds closed as a result of Covid be reinstated. This is what we call living with Covid. It is completely unacceptable that this has not happened.

Unless someone is a carer and has responsibility 24-7, or even part-time, and unless it is an individual's day-to-day reality, most of us cannot comprehend the beyond urgent need for respite services. These services allow family carers to have a weekend off and a family to be an ordinary family, where they can sit down for a few hours undisturbed, watch television, go to a football match or go to the cinema. Carers are suffering burnout. Family life is partly or completely disrupted and lives are put on hold.

The shortage of respite services means we are firefighting. What is happening is the most urgent case takes precedence over the extremely urgent, which takes precedence over the very urgent. The Minister of State and I are well aware of a situation in south Leitrim where there are no respite beds. I know of a family that had eight days respite per month for a young person with very special needs. Overnight, they were told it was gone because a more urgent case had come on board. It was simply gone. I know the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, is doing her best with it and, fair dues, she came to Carrick, but the question is why did this happen in the first place? People are still waiting and asking why it is taking so long.

I will raise a final point regarding a major problem in the care services. The Minister of State and I know carers travel from one home to another for a half-hour here and a half-hour there. It could be 10 km or 15 km one way or the other but they get no payment for travel. At the best of times, that is unacceptable but with the major increase in the cost of petrol and diesel, how are carers supposed to travel at their own expense when they are paid approximately €12 or €13 an hour? I have been contacted by carers who are thinking of giving up work because it costs them so much money - not to go to work or to go home, but to work. The acute shortage of carers will lead to a collapse of the system.

I ask the Minister of State to act on two things: travel costs paid to carers and the delivery of an adequate respite service for family carers.

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