Sinéad Gibney (Dublin Rathdown, Social Democrats)

I thank my party colleague Deputy Quaide for bringing forward this motion. As a member of the Social Democrats, I am very proud to put it forward. I realise that the issue has been debated many times in the House, but we have a clear commitment from the Government to abolish the means test and we have a clear rationale for how to do that, yet the Government chooses to continue to hedge and dodge what it has to do.

We have heard a lot of detail today, but I want to zoom out for a moment and talk about care more broadly, mar beidh cúram ag teastáil uainn uilig ag pointe amháin nó pointe eile. We all receive care over the course of our lifetime. Many of us will give care as well. It is really important to start from that point, because in his opening statement, the Minister, Deputy Calleary, said: "In short, we agree ... that the means test should be abolished. There is nothing between us on that." I will speak a little to the differences that we do have in both the how and the why.

I am not going to go over the figures Deputy Cian O'Callaghan already put forward to show how we can do this. The Government can do this in one swoop with this budget. It can abolish the means test for carers. It can broaden the tax base. It can look at the other ways in which we can fund this, but instead this morning we get from the Minister, Deputy Calleary, and the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, essentially a form of whataboutery. The Minister, Deputy Calleary, implied that by introducing this we would then have to penalise other groups in society, such as lone parents and people with disabilities.

That is not what we are suggesting. The Social Democrats do not suggest that. We are putting forward a motion that offers a way for the Government to do this overnight. That "how" is one of the big gulfs between us and the Government, but the wider one is the "why" of this. It is the motivation. In his opening comments, the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, acknowledged the great work being done by carers.

I do not doubt the Minister of State means that, but I think he comes at it with a very different world view to us. I argue there are ways in which the Government views care which holds on to the very paternalistic, very charitable model of care and disability we have in this society. What he is seeing from us, all across the Opposition benches, is the opposite. My colleagues have spoken about the professional care that is delivered in the homes. The Government must start to recognise that is what it is and reassess the entire relationship this State has with care and start recognising it for what it is: professional care that is provided in the homes of many people across this country. The one stark way one can tell the difference is that those families that have means pay for carers. That is the difference. It is the families that cannot afford to that have to put in the hours themselves and care for people. Until the Government starts to recognise that fundamental "why" - why we need to reward carers in a professional way - we will never meet across that gulf.

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