Sinéad Gibney (Dublin Rathdown, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Labour Party, including Deputy Wall, for bringing this motion to the floor of the House today to give us a chance to recognise the young carers in our society who contribute so much. I also welcome those who are in the Gallery today.

I am particularly interested in the quality public services which are essentially lacking in our society. That requires very much from family and informal carers. I will also speak about means testing but, first, I acknowledge the experience of young carers. I will speak briefly about my own experience. I became a single mum at the age of 24 which is, by today's discussion, on the border of young. I also acknowledge that I was in the privileged position of already having a university degree. I had even started my career so I was able to put my life on hold for 18 months and take care of my daughter before I returned to my career and got on with my life as a new mum.

Many young carers and young adult carers have to put their lives completely on hold. Their lives are so disrupted that they cannot continue with their education, social lives or friends and simply being children is no longer available to them because of the care responsibilities they take on. That is purely the result of a failure by the State to provide the quality public services that should underpin a modern progressive society that is the bedrock of a social democracy. We see time and again the failure of disability services, healthcare services and respite services in all quarters of society which is putting immense pressure on various groups in society. Single parents are one of them, as I mentioned. It will be single parents day tomorrow for the record so I give a particular shout-out to all the single mums and others parenting alone.

When we think about this motion and what flows from it, one of the big issues that is prevalent, and many people raised it with me during the election campaign, is the means testing of carer's allowance. What we are doing is punishing people for providing a service our society needs badly and which serves communities and families everywhere. People are at their wits' end. Although we saw a lot of talk about this during the election campaign, I have concerns about the speed at which it is being addressed. I urge the Minister and the Government to progress this as quickly as possible so that people can get out from underneath poverty and the pressure they are under to advocate for themselves while providing this service.

That all says to me that we have a much bigger conversation to have about care. It is also a gendered issue. Overall, care is either unpaid or underpaid and unfortunately these issues will all be symptoms until we deal with it. It even flows from our Constitution in which, although we name-check care, it is done in a terribly gendered and archaic way. We have much to do in simply acknowledging what is contributed by family and informal carers to our economy and society and all the value that provides, and in talking about it in the context of artificial intelligence, AI, because one of the few areas of labour that will not be displaced by AI is care. We cannot automate care or the caring of those around us. That applies to the teaching and nursing professions as well. If we were forward thinking, if we could be progressive in identifying, nurturing and valuing care, we would see a lot of gain in society.

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