Margaret Cox (Fianna Fail)

I do not support the amendment. It worries me when people mention, as they did earlier, the State's responsibility. I sometimes wonder whether they have forgotten about the family's responsibility. As a sister, and perhaps some day a mother, of somebody with a disability, I believe it is my responsibility, not that of the State, to look after a person in need. We are moving away from our responsibilities and pushing them on to the State. Unfortunately, in doing this we are creating a gap that we can never fill, an expectation of what the State must do for the people who care for others.

One of the sad things about the changes we have seen in recent years is the lack of responsibility people feel for members of their families. They are happy just to push them away into nursing homes and move on. We must be careful to ask ourselves whether, after bringing children into the world or being brought up by parents, we do not have a responsibility to look after them. Are we abdicating responsibility for our mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, sons, daughters, sisters or brothers by not looking after them when they are in need?

The issue of working with carers and looking after people in need is under constant review, but we must be careful. There will be a cost associated with every decision and we must decide where we want to spend money. I am not in favour of the removal of means testing for carers, which has been discussed many times in the House. If I have a parent who needs to go into a nursing home for full-time care because I am not able to look after her and I have the means – through an inheritance or earnings – to pay for it, I do not believe I should be entitled to extra money. For that reason, I am against the abolition of the means test. However, I accept that it needs to be reviewed and we must constantly move towards widening the band of eligible incomes. There are better ways to spend our money than by giving it to people who already have a great deal of their own and who are in a position to look after someone or employ a person to do so, without a consequent impingement on their disposable income.