Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The carer's allowance means test should be abolished and Sinn Féin is committed to abolishing it. We have heard lots of messages of support from across this House indicating that the means test should be abolished. Let us be very clear. There will be only one political party going to the electorate with a costed plan to abolish the means test. The reason we are doing that is very simple. It is because the means test is a mean test. It is unfair and it fails to recognise the huge service that carers do for our society.

Our position has come about because of our engagements with parents who care for children and young adults with disabilities. We see that because of this Government's failures in so many areas, these parents become occupational therapists, speech and language therapists and specialists in so many areas that they do the State's job. We meet people who care for their elderly parents and again, they have to become the GP, the support and the bedrock to ensure their parents have full lives. We see people who have to care for their husbands or wives in latter years. They save the State countless millions of euro. In fact, it is estimated that carers save the State in excess of €20 billion a year. Rather than recognising the value carers give to our society and the huge service they do for the State, they are instead forced to go through the ignominy of conducting a means test, where somebody else's income discriminates against their ability to get acknowledgement for the huge amount of work they do. Anybody looking at this logically or compassionately will quickly come to the view that the means test needs to be abolished. That is why Sinn Féin will go forward in the next election with a categoric guarantee that should the people put their faith in us and elect us to lead the next Government, this mean test will be abolished once and for all.

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