Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Not about anyone in this room. It is an observation. I have noticed a change in how I speak from down here.

I thank the group for putting in this motion. I have spoken here a number of times about my own experience of care and how important it is. My experience of care is within a family situation, but I have a lot of interaction and engagement with carers who work as professionals within that framework of carers. I come at this from both sides of that. According to the Irish health survey, in 2020 there were 500,000 family carers in this country, which is a huge number of people. I note that 17% of them were in receipt of carer's allowance and 52% were working outside of their home. Those are quite significant figures. The figure of 17% in receipt of carer's allowance is too low and 52% having to work outside the home for whatever reason is high.

Care is one of the key tenets of the work that we have been trying to do in the Labour Party over the last few years. My colleague, Deputy Duncan Smith, had a motion in the Dáil before Christmas on home care workers and the home support scheme.According to some of the figures that came out of that, the health budget for 2023 was originally funded for more than 23.9 million hours of home support under the HSE service plan but that was cut to 22 million hours in July to fund a pay increase. It funded an increase in salary but it would have been preferable had the hours not had to be cut for there to be a salary increase. It would have been ideal if the two could have gone together.

This motion outlines all the work that is being done and is going to be done but it would be remiss of me not to outline some of the areas in which we would like supports to be furthered. We know that the failure to fully resource home support services and the waiting lists for home care packages have led to delays in acute hospitals. At the end of June last year, there were nearly 500 delayed transfer of care patients, which is a lot. I have personal experience of seeing a loved one trapped in a hospital when they should have been able to get home to get the care they needed. It puts enormous pressure on family members to take a risk and provide that care. There is also an element of a postcode lottery and issues in respect of social and educational capital. Some people might know who they can ring and talk to if they happen to have links to something so there ends up becoming a class element. It is not just a postcode lottery but also comes down to what resources and abilities you have to be able to fight for things and I do not think that is how our care systems should work.

We talked previously about how social welfare rules create disincentives for part-time work for carers because they reduce the hours they can work. We in this House have talked about the lack of progress on employment terms and conditions, including travel expenses, a competency framework, recognition of trained work and pension schemes. Those are all areas we really need to get to grips with if we are to get the level of recruitment we want to give people the care they need. We still have some inconsistencies in the payment of the Covid recognition payment to home carers and other healthcare workers. People are still contacting my office to say they feel they ought to have been entitled to something. That is still rumbling on, which is not ideal.

It would also be remiss of me, while we are talking about carers, not to recognise that the 8 March referendum is coming up. A number of people, including those at Family Carers Ireland, are calling for two "Yes" votes. I will read the following quote from Tracy Carroll, who is a family carer:

As a family carer for my daughter and son, I've experienced firsthand the challenges and the lack of support. A 'YesYes' vote means recognising our role and addressing the support we desperately need. It's about giving dignity and strength to those of us in the shadows.

I know there are differing opinions on this referendum and whether it goes far enough and will enact meaningful change. I covered those issues previously in the House so I will not go over them again. This motion puts in writing a lot of what can and will be done, what should be done and what the Government has done, and the communication of that will be crucial to whether the referendum passes. We have talked about the importance of people knowing what is going to happen and what is not, and what will meaningfully change in people's lives. The pressure is going to be on the Government to share that information.

I welcome the motion and the Labour Party will be supporting Senator Clonan in his amendments. When I was leaving the office today and noting we are talking about carers again, I thought that we cannot talk enough about carers and the people who are saving this country €20 billion every year. We could talk about them in this House every day and we still would not do them they service they deserve for the work they do for the country.