Bríd Smith calls for €15 living wage and end to carers' means test

do appreciate that. There are a good few people who did not take their slot, so we underestimated the time. It is probably the last time I will speak in this stall. I appreciate being allowed to speak on this topic. I want to thank Sinn Féin for putting the motion and I want to thank the Carers Association and all the carers out there who do the job they do. It is a job I did for two years when my mother was alive, a job I was proud to do, but I can tell you it is a hard job and it is a job that means that you are 24-7 more or less on call. That puts the carers in this country into a very, very special category that I do not believe is recognised or ever has been recognised by any government, never mind this one or any previous one, and I doubt even the next one, except for this fact that the carers in this country are getting organised. The Family Carers Ireland Association has organised tens of thousands of them. They are becoming like a trade union, like a working group who are standing up and fighting for themselves and I hope and I will commit myself to when I am outside of this stall doing real politics to help them build a movement that will pressurise any future government into listening to them, into giving them their just desserts. Just to say, I find it really ironic that in his speech when he announced the budget, the Minister for Finance in relation to carers made a statement that said, and I quote, this government is committed to supporting individuals and families with caring responsibilities. A strong statement, much, much stronger, however, than the wording that was put into the care referendum, which was defeated because of the wording, which in a very weak and non-committal way said that governments will strive to support carers. That is a more committed statement than the one they gave us in a referendum and no wonder it was defeated because it failed to recognise the role of hundreds of thousands of men, women and often children and the role that they play in keeping this society going. The £20 billion per year last estimated in 2022 that they save the Irish state. And given that we now have a huge surplus with the apple tax, at the very least any government should do before it goes out of office is to abolish the very mean-spirited and often very personalised and intrusive, what do you call it, the carers allowance assessment, the means test, excuse me. To abolish the means test would be the very minimum they could do. The criteria are very intrusive, often asking very, very personal questions and often asking what, as was illustrated earlier on, often asking what do you do with your daily time if you are working more than 18 hours a week where a farmer says I am working on the farm 21 hours and he loses the carer allowance for that reason. So I think it is time that we did actually recognise the absolute fundamental role that carers play, will continue to play. We have to thank them but thanking them is not enough, we also have to reward them. And in our election manifesto people before profit are committed in the future to paying carers a living wage of 15 euro an hour. I do not think any other party recognises that on an average week that carers work the many hours they do but given an average working week they should receive the living wage of 15 euro an hour, never mind the minimum wage. And the abolition of the means test is absolutely crucial to treating them with that respect and recognition that they deserve. Their lives are put on hold and I can tell you that from lived reality your life is absolutely put on hold. I was a very short term carer but many do it for a whole lifetime. There needs to be recognition of that sacrifice and that driving them into poverty and treating them as objects is absolutely beyond the pale. We need to end that practice and I hope in the future that that movement will force the future governments to do so. Thank you Deputy Deputy Deputy.