Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Wall and the Labour Party for bringing forward this important motion. I also commend Family Carers Ireland and all the young carers who have brought this issue to our attention. We fully support the motion. I know the Government is not opposing it but I hope it will do more than just not oppose it and that it will take seriously this motion, which I assume was drawn up in consultation with Family Carers Ireland and the young carers themselves. I apologise for not being at the briefing today. I was out the door with meetings and so forth.

I am not an expert in this area. I have come across many of the issues to do with carers but I was staggered as I was reading about this. The Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, has done a lengthy paper on the whole issue which details many of the facts and figures and the issues confronting young carers. I am staggered by the bare bones of the issue, that we have 67,000 young carers between the ages of ten and 17. That is absolutely astounding. They are looking after parents and siblings with disabilities and chronic illnesses when they are children. It is a time when they need to develop, have a life, be educated and have a social life. It should be the beginning of a life flourishing but because of love, care and concern for their loved ones, they find themselves caring, washing people, cleaning up, feeding people and otherwise looking after them. That then impacts them disproportionately. Those young people are six times more likely to suffer the symptoms of depression, significantly affecting their results in the leaving certificate, according to the ESRI. It makes it more likely that they will suffer from things like poverty, financial distress, unhappiness and so on because they are engaged in an act of love and care for their loved ones and doing all of society a favour. I have learned from reading into the subject and from reading the motion about the huge service these young people are doing our society and tens of thousands of people who need help and care.

I seriously hope the Government is listening and will do absolutely everything.

It should of course immediately abolish the means test for the allowance and do a lot more about the income poverty carers suffer in general, but it has an even greater obligation to young people and children given the role they are playing in providing this care. The economics of it are obvious, although we should not even have to put it in these terms. Carers save the State about €20 billion a year, which is nearly the entire health budget. If these young people and other carers were not providing the care they do, we would have to double the health budget, pretty much. That is the service they are doing our society so it is incumbent on the Government to listen to what these young carers are saying. They have our support for all their efforts and well done to them for bringing this to our attention.

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