Joanne Collins (Sinn Fein)

I raise the issue of carer's payments in families where more than one person has qualifying care needs. As the Leader will know, carers currently receive half a carer's allowance on top of the full carer's allowance for any additional people they care for. Some families may have two, three or four children with qualifying additional care needs. Much of the time, the position of these families does not allow the person who is caring for those children to go to work, leaving the household with one wage. In the case of a single-parent family, the family can be left with no wage and dependent on that one and half carer's allowances. Is it possible for the Minister for social protection to review this issue? I am not talking about a blanket measure but a mechanism to address exceptional circumstances. Not every single person who is on carer's allowance will have that many in the house but there will be a few and the current provision seems to push these families into poverty. Perhaps it is something we could have a debate on.