Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This is my 49th speech on carers. While I welcome that Sinn Féin has a brought a motion, I am disappointed that it did not come on board as an Opposition party much earlier to look for the abolition of the carer’s means test. While it always maintains there should be a more streamlined approach and a little incremental increase in that, it did not look for abolition. My colleague, Sean Canney and I, and our other colleagues in the Regional Group brought forward two motions for abolition. They were two motions that the Government also accepted. The reason it accepted them is because it was not going to do anything about it. Here we are, maybe 24 hours out from an election, and the Government is again accepting this motion because it knows it will not do anything about it. The reality is that the Minister of State has made a speech that the Government is supporting 97,000 carers. I tell the Minister of State that it is not supporting another 200,000. According to the last census there were almost 300,000 carers in this country, and we know that has increased since the last census. My colleagues spoke about how we treat carers. We do not treat carers, we mistreat them. We are carrying out a means test that is, as has been said 100 times, mean. We are assessing somebody else's income to penalise the person who is providing the care to assess whether or not they have enough money and do not need to be paid for the care they do. Of course they should be paid for the care they do. We do not means-test jobseeker's payments. At a time when we have full employment, we carry out reviews at a level of 12,000 per annum on carers looking after their elderly or their vulnerable children in their own homes, saving this State €20 billion, and we are reviewing them at a rate five times more than that of jobseekers. These are people who we say could have jobs if they went out and looked for them but yet we will not pat those who save the State €20 billion.

As my colleague said, that is not a figure I made up. It is a figure that comes from proper PhD researchers in Maynooth University, paid for by Family Carers Ireland.

It is incredible the Minister of State can sit there. I understand why he is not looking at me. I would not be able to look at me either if I had stood up 49 times here saying the same thing. People give up their jobs to save the State money and we carry out a test on the people with whom they may or may not have a relationship but who happen to reside in the same household. A little more than two thirds of them are women and one third are men. The reality, as everyone knows, is that if it was the other way around and two thirds were men, carers would be paid. There would not be any means test. It is as simple as that but because they are women who spend all their time doing what they do, they have little time to advocate for the abolition of the means test. I have advocated for it since I was elected for the simple reason that they appear at my door or I go to visit them in their homes where I see what they do 24-7.

I have mentioned on this floor many times one carer who is the mother of four severely intellectually and physically disabled children. She is in receipt of 1.5 carer's allowances, perhaps €400 per week and she has no life. She says she provides physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, everything that would be provided if the State had to look after them and she probably provides a State saving of a little more than €1 million per year for carrying out that function. It is beyond me that as this Dáil comes to an end we are still standing here pleading with the Government. I recognise the inroads it has made. I just do not understand why we are penalising people who do a State service and save the taxpayer €20 billion.

I rest my case. I am disappointed this has not happened in the lifetime of this Government and I hope, whether I am back here or not, that it will be prioritised by the next Government.

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