Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate Deputy Cairns on the election of the councillors from her party. I wish everybody who was elected well. Lots of people voted for my party as well, and for my coalition party colleagues in Fianna Fáil and the Green Party. Her view of how people view the political situation is not always in line with what the people actually decided to do at the ballot box on Friday. More than 53% of council seats went to councillors from Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party. The Deputy should be aware of that. Her party did well in the elections, and I congratulate her on that, but the parties on these benches did better, too. When she says people do not buy it, people had a chance to give their views on lots of issues in a very large democratic exercise. Sometimes, the views expressed in this House are not actually the views that are expressed in villages, towns and cities right across this country.

I thank the Deputy for raising a very important issue concerning respite and care. I, along with the relevant Ministers, intend to meet directly with Family Carers Ireland this month. We need to listen to that organisation and drill down into a number of the findings in the very useful report it has published today. I express my gratitude to the thousands of carers in the country who provide unending care and support for their loved ones. I will tell the House some of the things we intend to do to support them and some of the things we have already done.

I fully understand the importance of respite provision for the families of children and adults with disabilities and, indeed, the positive impact it can have on their lives. That is why we have doubled respite funding since 2018. It is why my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, will, in the next couple of weeks, publish a new respite investment plan. That plan will take the additional money we allocated in the budget and detail how the funding will be used to support respite for children and adults. We need to do better and do more when it comes to respite. I am really looking forward to the plan because it will look at a whole variety of different ways we can help families. It will look at how we can provide day respite, more overnight respite and how we can make sure the residential respite capacity that is in place is being fully utilised.

For context, in 2018, there were 87,177 overnight respite nights provided. That number was 151,123 last year, in addition to 45,424 day respite places. I accept we are not doing enough and there is a need to do more. That is why we will publish a respite investment plan to detail how we intend to do more in the months ahead. By any fair measure, the level of respite provision has very significantly increased. The budget has more than doubled and the number of nights provided has gone from more than 87,000 to over 151,000.

Of course, respite is just one of a number of things that are being done to support carers. We also try to support them from a financial point of view through the carer's support grant, which the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, ensured was provided last week to 132,000 carers. This week, we are increasing the carer's allowance disregard, meaning more carers will qualify for that support and more income can be disregarded. That is a very positive way of helping carers.

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