Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank my colleague, Deputy Wall, who has been advocating this for some time, as did his dad before him as well, and I acknowledge the work of Family Carers Ireland.

This is a unique and neat motion. This is a group that cannot stand up for themselves. I was a bit disappointed in the Minister of State's response and in the Minister's response because we have discussed carers in here quite a bit. We have never really gone into the depths of discussing young carers and their difficulties - there are tens of thousands of them - and really need to do that.

The impact it has on these people and their health, education, future and opportunities in life is dramatic and can continue long beyond their youth. Somebody needs to say this out loud so I will. As a State, we are trading on their emotional commitment to their family members. That is a fact. The State is letting them down because we do not have the appropriate facilities in terms of health provision, education provision and other provisions, for the people they are caring for. When it is parents, often it is necessarily elderly care. We are trading on their emotional commitment to their family members. We are almost robbing them of the same opportunity of people of the same age. By doing so, we are preventing them from having the same enjoyment of life or educational opportunities and from the capacity to be ambitious for themselves and to live their lives in a way which may be different to the way they are doing it. We really need to deal with this.

As this is not mentioned in the programme for Government, I would really like the Minister of State to take out of this the following points. As for what we are going to do, tens of thousands of people are affected here. We need a detailed programme of supports across Government. We need, primarily at the very beginning, to identify who these people are because they are not categorised. Whether it is young carers under the age of 18 or young adult carers, we need targeted programmes. We need to ensure that they are not impacted in respect of social protection allowances because of what they are doing. We need targeted healthcare supports for family members.

The Minister of State really should take up the following proposal. If we are not going to provide them with some form of allowance for the work that they do, somewhere along the way we should help them with their educational requirements. Whether financially in grants or in other ways, there has to be a way in which we can intercept and help these people as they advance in life for the sacrifice that they are making for their family members.

We need a whole-of-government approach across all the issues my party and others have raised. Let us, once and for all, get to a point where we recognise the work young carers do in this country.

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