Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for attending and the Labour Party Senators for tabling the motion. Ireland is unusual when it comes to the type of care we have when compared with other European countries. We have a high number of family carers, which is unusual. A lot of countries have moved to institutional care, and we are the richer for not having done so. With that, however, comes a huge responsibility on the State. Based on everything I have heard and everything the Minister said, as well as judging by what we put into the programme for Government, there is a recognition of that now, but with that recognition, we need to see where the cash is.

I acknowledge all the great work the Minister has done in this area. It is only when we go back and look at it, or when we are a recipient, that we can see how much she has done, including the increase in the carer's support grant to €1,850, the highest ever; the increase in the capital and savings disregard for the means test assessment from €20,000 to €50,000; all the increases in the carer's allowance; and so on. Underpinning all this is the request from Family Carers Ireland to re-examine the means test. Regardless of how much income people have, it is very expensive to be a carer. It is not just about a person's income but also the expenses that go alone with caring. As Senator Ardagh outlined eloquently, sometimes there is no end in sight for a lot of carers. It is not a case of just facing a few years and then returning to the labour force. In many cases, you just do not know what the future will hold.

When the Citizens' Assembly on Gender Equality met, there were no boundaries on what it could discuss. It was a surprise to many people that a great deal of what was discussed by those citizens was about care, again going back to the nature of the people in this country. That was seen as a huge priority. I was honoured to be a witness in 2018 at a committee meeting with Family Carers Ireland advocating not for the removal from the Constitution of that dreaded reference to a woman’s place “within the home" but a replacement in order that we would make sure we recognised, through our Constitution, the fundamental place of carers. Before we went into that meeting, it was almost a done deal that the referendum would just remove the phrase, but overwhelmingly, the people on that citizens' assembly disagreed and agreed with the point Family Carers Ireland and I made at the time, namely, to hold a referendum that would place care at the centre of it. I would love an update on that. The Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, a member of my party, will have a role in this referendum and I look forward to the wording coming to Cabinet and forming the referendum, but what is stated in our Constitution will be only as good as what it provides in concrete terms for carers.

We have discussed at length the income and supports, but let us not forget there are 3,000 underage carers. Where is the support for them? They do not fall inside a lot of those brackets. We really have to think about the diversity in the types of people who are caring and remember at all times that people want to do it and they love their family members. It is difficult to advocate for yourself in that space because you might feel it is your duty or you might want to do it, but that is where the role of Family Carers Ireland, and of us as politicians, that other people are advocating for comes in. Whether it is called work or a labour of love, carers are not entitled to join a union that supports carers because they do not get income. That meant that until some of these organisations formed, there was silence. Carers tend not to be in the workforce or where policy is made, and they have not been represented in that full sense. The asks are fairly modest, but underpinning it all is a review of how we are doing things. That is not too much to ask.

Pensions are something in which there has been massive inequality for those who take time off work to stay at home, whether for a short or long period. Nobody can say that value given to society should go unrewarded towards the end of somebody's life. I know the Minister is doing work on that and, therefore, I look forward to hearing her response in that regard. We have a huge opportunity in the Government to get that right, and it is about time we did so.

I again thank Senator Sherlock, all the other Labour Party Senators and the Minister.