Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Government and probably everybody in the country recognises and acknowledges the crucial role that family carers play in our society. We are fully committed to supporting carers in that role. The commitment is recognised in the national carers strategy.

As the House may be aware, yesterday the Government agreed a new health service measure that will have a positive impact on the lives of people with disabilities, particularly their carers. Additional funding is being provided to enable all carers in receipt of carer’s allowance or a half carer's allowance to qualify for a GP visit card. There will also be an additional €10 million in funding to provide respite care for persons with disabilities. That will provide an extra 1,900 bed nights over and above what was agreed in the budget for 2018. The GP visit card measure will be implemented once the primary legislation is passed at the beginning of the new year.

The crucial role that carers play is explicitly recognised within the social welfare system. The income disregard and means test for carers is probably the most generous within the social welfare system and, at the full payment rate, the amount of weekly earnings disregarded is €332.50 for a single person and €665 for a people who are married, in a civil partnership or cohabiting.The maximum personal weekly rate of carer's benefit is €210, while the maximum personal weekly rate of carer's allowance stands at €209 for those aged 66 years and under and €247 for those aged over 66. In the budget, with the support of my Fianna Fáil colleagues, we provided for an increase of €5 per week from the week commencing 26 March 2018 in the maximum personal weekly rate of carer's benefit and carer's allowance. We also maintained the non-means-tested respite carer's support grant of €1,700 per annum. Half of the carer's allowance is paid in addition to certain primary social welfare payments where the carer meets the criteria for both schemes. Where a person is being claimed for as a qualified adult on his or her spouse, civil partner or co-habitant's social welfare payment and providing full-time care for another person, half-rate carer's allowance is paid, in addition to the qualified adult allowance. Carers who provide care for more than one person may qualify for an additional 50% of the maximum rate each week. Approximately 2,700 carers receive carer's benefit, while almost 75,000 receive carer's allowance. Approximately half of the latter receive the reduced rate of carer's allowance, with another full social welfare payment. In recognition of the value we place on the care provided, we will, as a nation, spend some €728 million this year on carer's allowance and carer's benefit and €180 million on the carer's respite grant and that is before we start to add the services provided by the Departments of Health, Justice and Equality and Education and Skills.

The adequacy of payments to carers, like every payment we make in the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, is kept under constant review. It is not the case that we need a special report or review to reflect the adequacy of the payments because it is done every year as part of the budgetary process and will be informed by developments in refreshing the national carers' strategy, for which my colleague, the Minister for Health, has overall responsibility. Increases are entirely dependent on the recovering economy, of which we are all so proud. I do not propose to accept the amendment and conduct a special once-off review because we carry out an annual review in the Department of all payments made.