Richard O'Donoghue: Calls to End Carers' Means Test and Boost Respite

Minister, Independent Ireland brought this motion in front of you for the Government to seek common sense. Recently we got the Budget and Oversight Chairperson, Independent Ireland, have it. The first thing we were going to be looking at is the cost of healthcare in this country and the value that is given for money, or the overspends, and we won't go to the children's hospital because it is just an open book, and the waste of funding, and then we look at the carers in this country, and you want the means testing. This motion advocates for the removal of the means test for carers allowance, ensuring that a full-time carer and support financially, not penalised by their partner's income. That is common sense, they are providing care. How many people do we know, Minister, that have given up their jobs because they can't get carers in their area? My own family are doing the same at the moment. My nieces, my nephews, have given up their own time and their jobs to make sure that a loved one is cared for. They also have their own families, young children, that they have got to care for. So by not providing a proper payment system for carers, we are actually doing the double because you are affecting the families themselves to care for their own families if they have got young families. The minimum respite guarantee, the motion proposed a legal entitlement to a minimum number of weeks of respite care each year for all carers. Acknowledging the importance of breaks for carers. If you go to some place and you have a carer that is working 24-7 and gets no break themselves, what do they hit? They hit burnout. So we have to ensure that the carers also get a break. We get a break here from the Dáil. Everyone else gets a break from their working life. No matter what sector you are working in, you have got a guarantee of breaks. But the problem is that sometimes the carers feel that if they take their break, there is no one left to care for the person they are caring for. But we have to allow for this through respite. Home Support Service Improvement. This motion also calls for improvements to Home Support Services, including ensuring adequate funding for Home Support Hours and addressing workforce shortages. I do not believe that there is anyone in this House that values what carers can do. I have mentioned the hospital, I have mentioned the overspend in hospitals. But I also mentioned in this that if you look at if there is a hospital shortage for nurses, where do they get the people to fill in? They use agency staff. If you look at the cost of agency staff that come into hospitals, they are a day here, a day there. It does not fix the problem because we should have full time nurses in the hospitals. To me there should be very, very little agency staff because that agency staff should actually be staff because for the working of making somebody better, you have to have a relationship with the person. An agency staff should be only brought in for a stopgap to fill something if there is no other option. But at the moment our health service is top heavy with agency staff that should be actually staff. You look at the cost of employing one of them and then you look at the cost of what it is to provide a carer in a person's own home and you look at the cost difference between it and what it is costing the state. It is absolutely bizarre. For what an agency staff is being charged to the government could possibly apply for three carers. This is what we are looking at. On one side it is top heavy with money in the health service and on the other side where people can be cared for within their own home, cared for well, you are penalising them. People are going above and beyond the care for people in their own homes and you are penalising them. Why can't we have something streamlined that we look after the people that want to help, that want, even they are taking pay cuts themselves to care for people. People are travelling around this country to go to an hour here, an hour there, an hour there. They are going to go to 30 or 40 miles to care for people. They do not go to just one house. They go to people and they help them. Also what has been brought into the care system at the moment is the regulation that is stopping people that really want to help somebody that they know need extra help within the household. We need to protect that as well and allow for that. Put the carers properly and we will have people that want recognition and support for young carers, the next generation. They see what people are doing, they see the care they are providing for parents, grandparents, people that when they are at home that have disabilities that want to be cared for within their own home. They see that first hand, they are getting the experience of watching other people doing it and what they are actually watching is that they have been penalised and there is no career choice for them to use it as a career if they want to help and also have to have a life themselves that they can support a family if they wish to go into that care sector. We have to make sure that it covers all generations and for the next generation so they will see, if I want to be a carer and I want to do good, that I can also have a life myself that I am not going to be penalised in the sector by trying to help somebody. Thank you.