Carol Nolan (Laois-Offaly, Independent)
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467. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection to increase the 18.5-hour ceiling for people in receipt of carer’s allowance who want to undertake training or education, while providing full-time care; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [29196/24]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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My department provides a comprehensive package of carers’ income supports including Carer’s Allowance, Carer’s Benefit, Domiciliary Care Allowance and the Carer’s Support Grant. At end of June, there were 97,127 people in receipt of Carer's Allowance. Combined spending on all these payments to carers in 2024 is expected to exceed €1.7 billion.

The Carer’s Allowance is the main scheme by which the department provides income support to carers in the community. Carer’s Allowance is a means tested social assistance payment awarded to those carers who are caring for certain people who require full-time care and attention. The means test is used to target the support to those most in need.

The primary objective of the payment is to provide an income support to carers whose earning capacity is substantially reduced as a consequence of their caring responsibilities and in so doing to support the ongoing care of the person in respect of whom care is being provided.

A primary qualifying condition for the carer income supports provided, is that the applicant provides full-time care and attention to a person in need of such care. The person being cared for must be so incapacitated as to require full-time care and attention and be likely to require this full-time care and attention for at least 12 months. The time spent providing care must not be less than 35 hours per week.

While the family carer support payments provided are premised on the provision of full-time care and attention by the carer, they do provide flexibility in terms of allowing carers to engage in training, education or work up to 18.5 hours per week. This was increased from 15 hours as part of Budget 2020 in response to requests from carer's organisations and carers themselves who found the 15 hours too restrictive. In effect, a Carer can engage in these activities for half of a full-time working week. During this time, adequate provision must be made for the care of the relevant person.

Both the full-time care and attention requirement and the 18.5-hour limitation are contained in the respective legislative provisions of the Carer’s Allowance, Carer’s Benefit and Carer’s Support Grant schemes.

In setting the relevant hours limitation threshold, it is essential to balance the needs of the carer and the needs of person to whom care is being provided.

The 18.5-hour limitation represents a reasonable balance between meeting the requirement for providing full-time care for the care recipient and the needs of the carer to engage in education, training or employment, thereby supporting a carer’s continued attachment to the workforce and broader social inclusion.

Any changes to the eligibility conditions for any of the carer related statutory schemes operated by my department would need to be addressed in an overall policy and budgetary context.

I trust that this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.