Vol. 482 No. 7
87 Mr. Ring asked the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs the exceptions or special regulations, if any, there are whereby a person can be approved a carer's allowance without living with the person they care for. [19201/97]
The carer's allowance is a social assistance scheme which provides an income maintenance payment to people who are providing elderly or incapacitated pensioners or certain persons with disabilities with full-time care and attention and whose incomes fall below certain limits. At the end of last August 9,753 people were in receipt of a carer's allowance at an estimated full year cost of £36.4 million.
There have been a number of improvements in this payment since its introduction in 1990. In this year's Social Welfare Act a change was introduced to the rule which required that the carer must provide full-time care and attention in order to cater for those situations in which recipients of care attend approved rehabilitation courses. Under the new arrangements, the person may attend a recognised non-residential rehabilitation training or day care centre. Furthermore, an additional payment of 50 per cent of the basic rate, was introduced for carers who take care of more than one person. Nonetheless, it remains a specific condition of the scheme that the carer provide the person being cared for with full-time care and attention and there are no regulations which exempt the carer from residing with the person requiring care.
In this Action Programme for the Millennium the Government is committed to: progressively relaxing the qualifying criteria for the carer's allowance to ensure that more carers can get the benefit; and increasing the value of the allowance in real terms. In line with these commitments, I will consider the further development of the scheme in the context of an overall review of the provisions for carers, which is being carried out by my Department and in the light of budgetary considerations.
