Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I fully support this important and timely motion from the Women's Parliamentary Caucus, of which I am an eager member. I thank the chairperson and vice chairperson of the caucus and, in particular, the secretariat staff, especially Eva Nolan, for all their work and support on this issue.

I attended this morning's launch of the Family Carers Ireland scorecard for this year. That document shows very clearly what progress, if any, has been made on the 18 relevant commitments in the programme for Government. It was disappointing to see there has been regression this year on four of those commitments, which means the situation is actually worse now than previously. The scorecard showed there are six commitments on which nothing has been achieved, five that have seen limited progress and only three where there has been good progress. The Family Carers Ireland representatives mentioned they were happy that the Minister for Social Protection is the first Minister in 14 years to raise the income disregard for carer's allowance. That is much appreciated. I know the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, is extremely busy but it would have been great if she or another Minister could have been present to hear the lived experience of the women who spoke. As Deputy Shortall said, their words deeply affected all of us. I must mention the gorgeous Willow, one of the daughters of the mothers who were there, who was fantastic. It was great to get an insight into their daily lives and experiences.

The carers mentioned a few issues that I raise now with the Minister of State. One was respite, which was described as the Holy Grail for carers. For some, respite is completely non-existent. It is heartbreaking to hear that. For one particular family, as I am sure is the case for many others, such provision has been non-existent for 20 years. For another family, there are three weekends of respite a year, although there are sometimes difficulties with staff shortages. The carers also wanted me to mention the delay in implementing the national carer's strategy and to ask that it be addressed as soon as possible. There has been a delay for the past six years. I wanted to mention a few other points but I am out of time. I will just refer to the carer tax credit, for which €5 million was committed but only €1.1 million has been delivered so far.

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