Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 34:

In page 14, after line 7, to insert the following:

“10. The Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection shall within three months of the passing of this Act, prepare and lay a report before the Houses of the Oireachtas reviewing and making recommendations regarding a potential re-entry credit to support those who have been engaged in care work for a period of time and to access on a voluntary basis employment information and supports.”.

This amendment relates to an issue I have highlighted in parallel with the issue of care credits, on which some progress has been made. It seeks to ensure that since we put in place a mechanism for care credits that we should seek to have some additional value from that mechanism and that we would create an further pathway back into employment or education. It seeks to ensure that for those engaging in the provision of care, which would qualify for care credits under the system being set out with respect to the contributory pension, those credits covering a period of time spent providing care - I am not referring to the carer's allowance but to care work in the wider sense of the care credit system - could serve as a re-entry credit. For example, currently persons who take a period of time to deliver care effectively disappear from the system. If one has two years without any contributions being made visible, one's record becomes effectively invisible. If one has a contributory record and wants to access services, this is an issue around being visible to the system.