Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I commend my colleague, Deputy Wall, whose commitment to carers neither begins nor ends with this motion. He has done, and continues to do, wonderful work. I also commend the young carers who are here. Nowhere in this country does the State get better bang for its buck than the money it gives to carers. That is compounded even more by young carers who get nothing. With what they give, and what they save the State, it is absolutely abhorrent that this system continues. This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that we will debate carers in the Dáil. We did it a lot in the last Dáil and yet very little has changed.

This motion focuses on young carers who gave the most powerful testimonies in the audiovisual during the last Dáil and again today, and yet nothing seems to change. A study by the ESRI shows that there are long-term impacts for young carers specifically around education, with lower leaving certificate grades and less progression to higher education among those young carers involved in care giving.

There are clear ripple and knock-on effects throughout their adult life, yet the State takes no role or responsibility and remains wilfully blind to these outcomes and effects. This needs to be addressed by means of cross-departmental work. It simply cannot be allowed to linger unseen and not tackled. We need to see the establishment of a working group on young carers and, equally importantly, we need the Department with the lead responsibility, namely the Minister's Department, to be held accountable.

While motions on carers were not rare in the previous Dáil by any stretch of the imagination, progress, unfortunately, has remained slow. A real problem has developed with this Government in recent years - and it is the same Government - whereby empty platitudes have taken the place of real action.

Carers, even those who are in receipt of carer’s allowance, because that is not an end in and of itself, have to deal with the constant spectre of the Department over their shoulder waiting to fall down for a review. There is a mendacious culture in the Department to the effect that money given to carers is something that should be reviewed constantly and that needs to be taken back.

I am working on a case which concerns a caregiver who is in receipt of carer’s allowance for caring for her daughter. Her daughter is starting a State-sponsored programme to try to get into the workforce for a few hours per week that is well below the threshold. They both sought assurances that a review of the carer’s allowance would not take place because they had just been through a review in the past nine months. They made those representations carefully, but what happened? The Department instigated another review. The disgraceful treatment of carers by the State and the Department continues. This is no more evident than in the ignorance about young carers. This motion goes some way to try to change that. We need more than just platitudes and agreement. We need action. What is happening to our carers is a disgrace.

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