Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The people who voted for candidates who they met at their doors and who they put their trust in want representatives who will work hard, who are clear in what they can deliver and who can offer credible solutions to the many problems we face. We all know what those problems are, namely the housing disaster, the healthcare crisis, the climate emergency and threadbare disability services.

The findings contained in the new report published today by Family Carers Ireland are shocking, but they should not be a surprise to any of us. Nearly two thirds of carers have never received any respite. A similar number say they struggle to make ends meet. Their loved ones do not receive any formal support. Nearly 50% have had to pay privately for products or services that should be publicly available to them. Nearly one in four has missed a mortgage or rent payment in the past year.

The report outlines a litany of failure when it comes to State services and State reports. The problem is not even that there is no support out there - although that is increasingly the case for many families - it is that the State often seems to erect barriers to deny people what little support does exist. People are faced with qualifying criteria for supports are almost impossible to meet, time-consuming and complicated application forms that they do not have the time and energy to fill out and an attitude of ambivalence and apathy on the part of State institutions that chips away at people's morale and self-belief.

The Taoiseach has repeatedly promised to support carers. People do not buy it, however, because they have heard it all before - the same promises and the same commitments that bear no relationship to the reality experienced by carers. That reality is what is reflected in today's report. I refer here to the daily financial struggle, the anger at the lack of services, the constant anxiety about the absence of supports and the dread about what will happen to loved ones when the carer is no longer around.

There is no bigger gap between rhetoric and reality than the one that exists when it comes to disability and care. Disabled people and older people have a right to live independent lives that the State refuses to vindicate. The Government repeatedly tells carers how much they are valued and then refuses to value them. It is an indictment of this Government that access to respite, which is already in crisis, is deteriorating.

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