Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome those in the Gallery from Family Carers Ireland and the people this motion is for and about. As has been referenced previously, obviously, not every carer can be here today because they have caring responsibilities. I thank Senator Ardagh for her contribution. Sometimes, in here, you get a moment where you see the reality of our lives behind the cameras and all the things we do, and we realise that people have complex lives and go through difficult times. Sometimes, they share that with us. I thank Senator Ardagh for sharing the experience of caring and for highlighting the responsibility involved. I have spoken a little about my own family's experience. Caring takes an enormous toll on you. Whether it is a short period of caring for a loved or perhaps a lifetime of caring for someone, it weighs on your shoulders in a way that I think people who may have not experienced it are not aware of. You feel that weight on your shoulders all of the time. Some people have talked about respite. Even when those caring responsibilities are gone, for whatever reason, and you are no longer caring for a person, it takes a long time for that weight to come off your shoulders. You constantly feel it and you constantly feel their presence. I thank Senator Ardagh for talking about that.

We have home care services because we want people to be able to receive help, social and professional care in their home. That is a really important thing. Senator Pauline O'Reilly talked about how we have quite a high number of carers here in Ireland. The benefit of that is that people get to be in their homes, with their families and they get to be cared for within that unit. Of course, the other side of that is the cost to the individual doing the caring. There is also the flipside for the State. There are over half a million carers. That is a lot of people to consider if we plan to move their work into a State-paid system. Half a million people are doing what is, for a large number of them, unpaid work. They are doing an enormous amount. The Family Carers Ireland State of Caring 2022 report stated that the lived experience of those providing informal care shows that carers experience significant poverty, loneliness, social exclusion and reduced physical and mental health without access to central supports. Those are hard things to hear. The Minister has outlined a number of measures her Department is taking. I hope that perhaps what we are putting forward will be seen as a bolster to what we can really offer carers. Of course, there are carers who are not the carers we traditionally think of. They may be family carers or foster carers. We have spoken previously about children who are carers. That is something we really need to think about. I have spoken to some of them and they are children under the age of 18 who are carers for a family member or have become de facto carers for a sibling. It is hard to hear about the impact that is having on them, on their education, their sense of well-being, their growth and future prospects. It is something we need to think about. We have not fully interrogated the issue of child carers yet, the level we have in Ireland and the impact that is having on them.

Like many Deputies and Senators, we met representatives of the National Federation of Voluntary Service Providers last week. Last year, the federation highlighted the fact that over 1,500 people with intellectual disabilities were living with family carers over the age of 70, more than 450 of whom were living with family carers over the age of 80. We must think about the burden that that is putting on people who perhaps need care and support at home themselves, yet they are still caring for loved ones. Many people with intellectual disabilities and autism have a need for residential support and there is no pathway to access this. Budget 2023 provided just 43 places to address emergency needs. I hope that that number will rise drastically in the next budget. I am not going to go too much further into this. Our motion is reasonable. We are asking for a small amount that we believe will make a really significant difference to people.