Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As the Minister of State well knows, family carers are an invaluable but undervalued element of the healthcare service in Ireland. Over 350,000 carers provide essential care on a daily basis to over 400,000 people saving the State an estimated €10 billion a year, which is very significant. Many of these carers devote a major part of their lives to caring for a loved one in situations that are often, let us be honest, very lonely. These carers remain silent and isolated. They accept their lot and get on with the task in hand. If it was not for the sacrifice made by family carers, many of those who are cared for would have to be provided with long-term State care that would cost multiples of millions of euro, which would place an intolerable financial burden on the State.

Like many other politicians - I talked to Senator Malcolm Byrne on my way in about this matter and he recognises the same problem - we have all been inundated with calls from family carers wondering why their work is any less valuable than other front-line workers in the health service or elsewhere. This is not about pitting one worker against another in a race for people to get vaccinated. The practical question is as follows. Who would mind the person who needs the carer if the carer is struck down with Covid? That is a very simple question for the Minister of State, for me and for everybody else.

We know that younger carers have a lower risk of hospitalisation or death if they contract Covid. However, we have being continuously told by NPHET and others, and rightly so, that this disease can have very serious implications across all age groups.

Many family carers are frantic at the thought of contracting the virus because they do not have a plan B to provide care for the people or individuals who they are caring for. Let me give an example. Yesterday, I spoke to two different carers. One is a teacher in her 50s. She is a single woman and she provides critical care to her three elderly relatives in the early morning, at lunchtime, in the evening, at night and at weekends.That is her task. They are her parents and her aunt. The four of them live together. She is back in school and, consequently, is more susceptible to contracting the virus but she is doing her duty at both ends, as a teacher and as a carer. While her mother, her father and her aunt who she minds at home have been vaccinated, the carer, who is just over 50, is unlikely to be vaccinated for the next couple of months. She is worried sick that if she comes down with Covid-19 she has no one to turn to for help. She asked me a simple question: where will her parents and her aunt go? They suffer from various illnesses, have very poor mobility and certainly could not manage 24 hours on their own, let alone a week or two, if she were to be out of commission. If she contracts the virus, she is in the house and no one else can come into it. As a result, she is in an intolerable position.

Another very sad case involves a single mother who was in contact with me. Her husband died in tragic circumstances two years ago. She has three children under the age of ten. Two have autism and are at the severe end of the spectrum. She does not have any family locally so therefore has no support. She is petrified that she will be infected. She is concerned about the older child who is in school and might bring the virus home. She has no idea where she would turn to in the event of falling sick with Covid.

Those are just a sample of the cases that have been relayed to me daily but, in particular, over the past couple of weeks. We need to do what is right by these people who provide an enormous service to the State. They usually ask for nothing. They carry their burden with dignity and always in silence. It is time we recognised their plight and prioritised their vaccinations.