Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the motion. I commend Deputy Harkin and the Independent Group on bringing forward this really important motion. As the Minister will know, the need to review carer's allowance is an issue I have raised many times. From listening to the discussion this morning, however, the issue is clearly much broader than that.

There is a clear need to put a plan in place with regard to carer's allowance and those income supports for family carers going forward. It is very clear that we cannot continue with the situation where year on year at budget time, there is a circus over whether there will be a fiver increase or no fiver or what will be in it. We need to give family carers certainty regarding their income supports. That is so important.

Again, we know the national carer's strategy is under the Department of Health but, of course, there is a role for the Department of Social Protection as well. That report remains unpublished. The previous one was published 11 years ago. We need to see movement. We need to see commitments in that with ring-fenced funding and we need to ensure they are implemented.

In fairness to family carers, when that report was published back in 2012 there was a financial crisis. Carers accepted that. The report was not implemented but we need to ensure that does not happen again. We need to see the commitment, words and tributes to family carers actually brought through in action.

The Minister spoke about the increase in the earnings disregards but one increase does not make up for the 13 years when there was no increase at all. One year in which there is one change does not make up for that. We have an awfully long way to go in improving the earnings disregard to ensure more family carers who are providing full-time care and attention get income support.

As always in these debates, it will be said that carers enjoy the most generous means test or the highest income limits of any payment. That is because they are the only cohort of people receiving a payment from the Department of Social Protection who are required to provide a full-time role and full-time care and attention while also being limited regarding what they can do outside the home, be that study or work. Carers are the only cohort that has those obligations placed on them and so they are unique in the Department of Social Protection system.

Reference was made to the presentation by young carers in the committee a couple of weeks ago. They came in share their experiences of being a young carer. It was a very informative presentation for everyone who was present. What they told us really mattered. They spoke about the limits the care they provide places on their lives and what they can do. They spoke of worrying about the financial cost of continuing in education and of struggling to find the time to study and get their homework done. The thread running through most of the experiences of the young carers was the lack of understanding and recognition for the care they provide as young carers and the lack of understanding in places like the school setting. There is definitely a wider role here for the Department of Education in this.

Last year, the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Social Protection examined the carer's allowance, specifically means testing. It was a very good meeting at which we heard directly from three family carers. In discussing this issue today, it is important that we hear the words spoken by those carers. We heard from a carer in his 60s. He told us that in 2003 his wife gave up work to mind their twins and other children full time. The hospital she worked in lost a brilliant accident and emergency nurse. She gave up a career she loved and forfeited her salary and future pension entitlements. In 2013, he had to retire early from his job as an assistant director of mental health nursing because the girls were at the magic age of 18. He loved his job but he loved his girls more. Being 18 meant the end of school and there were no adult day services available. He said that lots of carers do not receive any income support. He added:

These carers continue caring and looking after their loved ones. In many or most cases, if they stop caring for their loved ones, there is no one else to step in to do it ... All we ask is to be treated fairly and with dignity and respect. We do not want to face a future of poverty and frugality. Our futures are bleak enough as it is, getting older and frailer and still minding our adult children when we are getting to a stage when we ourselves are beginning to need help.

These are the family carers who need our support. They need it in income support and in the long-promised State pension. It is clear from this discussion that we have an awful lot more to do, not just to speak but to act in supporting our family carers throughout the State.

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