Vol. 495 No. 6
147 Ms O'Sullivan asked the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs if he will allow people on carer's allowance to work up to 20 hours per week in cases where a family member can look after the person similar to the situation in relation to invalidity pension; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [20886/98]
The qualifying conditions for the carer's allowance differ from those applying to the invalidity pension. One of the qualifying conditions for receipt of invalidity pension is that the pensioner must be permanently incapable of working. Accordingly, recipients of invalidity pension are not, in general, allowed to work.
However, with the prior approval of the Department, invalidity pensioners are allowed to engage in occupational training or work of a rehabilitative or therapeutic nature. There are no earnings or time limits applying to such training or work. These measures are designed to encourage and facilitate invalidity pensioners who wish to try and re-enter the workforce.
The carer's allowance is a social assistance scheme which provides an income maintenance payment to people who are providing elderly or incapacitated pensioners and certain persons with disabilities with full-time care and attention, and whose incomes fall below certain limits.
In its 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, an overall review of the carer's allowance has been completed and was published earlier this month.
One of the proposals put forward in the review concerns the relaxation of the full-time care and attention requirements to allow carers to undertake ten hours part-time work per week having due regard to the care recipients' needs. This would be a further extension of the relaxation of these rules earlier in 1998 which allowed carers to attend educational or training courses or participate in voluntary or community based activities, for around ten hours per week, provided that the carer makes adequate provision for the care recipient in his-her absence.
This proposal, and the other proposals contained in the review, will be considered in a budgetary context in the light of available resources.
