Cathal Berry (Kildare South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this important debate. From the outset I acknowledge the role of Deputy Verona Murphy, who had the initiative to come up with this concept in the first place. Deputy Denis Naughten and our group administrator, Cáit Nic Amhlaoibh, put the meat on the bones of this motion. Family Carers Ireland advised us throughout the entire process. I can be 100% sure, as I am sure the Minister of State is, that every word in this motion has massive relevance, is really important and been optimised over the last number of weeks.

I welcome the Geoghegan family to the Public Gallery. Anne, Aidan and their daughter, Rachel, have travelled from Portarlington this morning to bear witness to this debate. This is an indication of the importance of the debate. They are very welcome here. Rachel, who is 22 years old, has been in a wheelchair all her life and is completely non-verbal. In a way, we are here speaking on her behalf. I very much hope we do her justice because that is exactly why her family are here. They are here to look for justice. If Rachel could speak, I suspect she would first acknowledge the very small improvements that have occurred over the last six months. There have been improvements, as Deputy Grealish outlined, from a pension point of view and from the income threshold perspective but much more needs to be done. She would remind the Minister of State that it is the State's obligation to look after her and that her parents, who are also her carers, pick up the lion's share of that obligation. She would ask the Minister of State to ensure the Government meets carers halfway, at the very least, and to improve the lot of carers across this country. This morning, we are representing not just the Geoghegan family but also the half a million carers across the country who cannot be here today. Why are they not here? It is primarily because they are caring for loved ones in their homes.

From a justice perspective, if we want to address the injustice out there, the pension anomaly is an area that needs work. It is completely incomprehensible that most carers are only on about €12 more than the average social welfare payment for doing a 35-hour week. There is plenty of opportunity to fix that over the next few months.

Next is the means test. Deputy Denis Naughten summed it up best in a recent social media post when he described the means test as a "mean test", which is what it is when one considers the contribution that carers are making across the country.

The second last point I want to make is about the gender aspects to caring. I am sure the Minister of State is well aware that the vast majority of carers are women. It is completely unfair that there is a joint assessment done, to which some of my colleagues have referred. We should never assume that a wife has equal or even partial access to a husband's salary. To peg a wife's income to her husband's income makes absolutely no sense to me. We need to work on that from a moral point of view as well as from a financial perspective.

Finally, from an implementation point of view, we are all rational and reasonable people here so we recognise that lots of things are much easier said than done. That is why this motion contains an implementation piece. There is a three-year time horizon or three-year window but we emphasise that it needs to be front-loaded. There is only one budget left in the lifetime of this Dáil and it is a golden opportunity for the Government to put a downpayment on that.

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