Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Senator Seery Kearney was right about what we are trying to achieve in each budgetary cycle. I think back to when we are looking to achieve improvements for care, and care is so fundamental to so many of the elements of my Department, in budget 2023 I wanted to do something on the foster care allowance but when we looked at it we did not have the money to go round that year. However, in budget 2024, we were able to advance it. That reflects the clear onus of "strive". It will not deliver every single improvement on the first day and everyone recognises that. However it is that clear progressive goal of improving the supports for care and for carers.

It is important to say it is a myriad of care. We focus, rightfully, on the issue of disability but care is care for children, for those with a disability and for the elderly. There are diverse types of care and that care is provided by a diverse type of carer. It is provided by mams and dads, by sons and daughters, by the extended family. The "family" referred to in Article 42B is not the constitutional Family we spoke about earlier. It is not the martial family or the durable relationship. Because it is "family" with a small "f" it is a distinction from the Family referred to in Article 41. Linked to that, because Senator Ruane raised the specific point, on the issue of kinship care, my Department recognises there is a large lacuna right there with regard to the thousands of people who are in kinship care and for whom the current policy and supports do not do enough. The Department is doing a piece of work right now to bring together a policy paper on kinship care and to look to see what the next steps we can bring forward are.I hope that is one tangible example of a recognition that there are groups of carers who are not being properly supported right now and we know we need to do more. I cannot say what we are going to do yet because we are early in that process but there is recognition that change is needed there and clear policy mechanisms do need to be put in place.

I listened carefully to the points Senator Clonan made yesterday and today. I spoke on them yesterday and will try to do so today as well. We clearly identified the word to use in the new article 42B as “care”. That is because there is the understanding that there are two or more people in a care-based relationship. We did not use “carer” because that very much focuses on one element. We talked about the word “care”. I thought Senator Higgins put it very well when she said care was about receipt as well as provision. That is absolutely what we seek to achieve with this article. Both parties to that caring relationship are recognised. That is why the term "care" was chosen. I spoke earlier how there was some criticism that carer is not specifically called out but we use the term "care" because we did not want to create that asymmetry between the person receiving and the person providing care in the particular situation.

Particularly early in the debates today, many people referred to care in the home. It is really important to state that “care in the home” is not used anywhere in the new Article 42B. We were talking about the previous article and they get linked in but it is quite important and, again, it was a deliberate choice. It is care within the family. It is not linked to a physical or geographical location. Where a person who leaves the family home every single day to go to work and has a personal assistant with them, that is fully covered in the purpose here even though the vast majority of the time the personal assistant is with them they are outside the home. It is still encompassed in what we are addressing here.

It goes back to the point that the infrastructure of care is so important here and that family care cannot, in many circumstances, take place without that infrastructure of care. That is relevant in disability, elder care and child care too. We recognise that more needs to be done in that wider infrastructure. Yesterday, I spoke a little about some of the things the Government has done and that it is committing to in the short term. Senator Higgins spoke about the action plan for the implementation of all elements of the citizens’ assembly and the report of the joint committee. Across the Government, we are monitoring our progress on each of those. We have been able to do quite a lot in my Department on the childcare and leave side of things. There might be an opportunity for the Seanad to have a debate on where we are there. Much of it falls within my Department, although not all of it, obviously. There is progress against much of the non-constitutional recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly on Gender Equality.

Ireland’s ratification on the optional protocol of the UNCRPD is something we have discussed here in the past. Originally, we had a plan that we would do our first reporting cycle, get our first report and then look to ratify the optional protocol at that point. We have submitted that report. There are significant delays with the UN body. Myself and the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, have said we are open to doing it sooner. We have commissioned a piece of work on the remaining blockages to ratification and the remaining areas where Irish law is clearly out of line with the UNCRPD that we need to address. We got rid of an important one with the assisted decision making legislation. We have commissioned the work and it is under way. I hope to receive the outcome of that in the coming weeks and I hope then I will be in a better position to outline the steps towards ratification. I am not able to give the Senator a date today but we are working to identify the final barriers towards that ratification.

On independence and the recognition of independence, particularly talking about persons with disabilities, the passing of the assisted decision making legislation, which had been sitting on the shelf since 2015, and the resourcing of the decision support service is, I hope, one example of the Government wanting to operate in the new regime that our ratification of the UNCRPD must recognise.

I think everybody who spoke on this today recognised that, at a minimum, the language of Article 41.2 is outdated. I think everyone had some qualms about the existing language. I know that some people had a much harsher view of the language but there was some common agreement there on it being outdated. It is language that has not delivered tangibly for women or mothers and we have an opportunity to replace that with a clear constitutional valuing of family care. It is an inclusive valuing of care; it values care, be it the care of parents for their children, of mams and dads for their children, of sons and daughters for their elderly parents, or of family members for a family member with a disability, but most importantly, for the first time, we will have that constitutional onus and obligation on the State to do more. We have heard so clearly from Senators here and from Deputies in the other House how the State does need to do better in terms of the delivery of care. What is being proposed here is a meaningful step. It is a step that is worth supporting and one we need to take. It will not finish these issues but it is a meaningful step forward to a better recognition and better support of care.