Thank you Chairman, Deputies and Senators for the opportunity to attend this meeting to give members some details of the experience we have had with carers in the home.
We are a non-governmental organisation and have been in existence for more than 20 years. During that time we have been actively trying to support the role of women in the home - women primarily and historically, though things are changing, with men also involved.
We have many members from different walks of life - married, single, full-time in the home, full-time outside it or part-time. Due to the nature of the work, the vast majority of our members are from single income families and do not have social welfare entitlements. Most are of moderate means and come increasingly under pressure to leave the home, to leave aside domestic cares, both housework and primarily the care of the people involved, in order to go out to work to meet the ever-demanding financial pressures on them and their families.
I could go into great detail with this presentation, but having listened to the others, it is clear a vast majority of the points we wanted to make have already been made. I do not want to waste any time and will cut to the chase. There are a couple of issues that need to be supported in order to make the carers more self-sufficient and make the whole system more beneficial for all of us.
The first thing to be said - this might be the most important thing to be taken from this presentation - is that home carers save money. If money is to be saved, the home carers need to be supported. How can that be done? Deputy Ring has already made the point that the work of home carers needs to be acknowledged. Since the dawn of mankind it has been recognised that the care of people from the youngest child to the eldest member of the family is mostly taken into consideration by the family itself. Sadly, our society - and doubly sadly, this is being endorsed from the top of our Government downwards - has moved away from being one which supports the family both socially and financially to a society that more and more endorses the life of the individual. This is primarily illustrated by our unjust tax system. The Government has introduced a taxation system which penalises people for wanting to stay at home and take care of their children or indeed their elderly parents. The State should get value for its money, and the home carer offers the best value to the State.
According to the latest census, there are more than half a million people involved in full-time care in the home. Two-fifths of those, 200,000 people, are caring for elderly relatives or handicapped friends in the home. Despite this huge number, these people are - as far as our society is concerned - invisible. There is no mention of them in the GDP - they do not exist within the gross domestic product. There has been no CSO or ESRI poll to establish how much work these people do or how much money they are saving the State. All that is happening is that they are being penalised and told they do not exist. We have already heard from Ann McGowan how frustrating that is.
We cannot run with the hares and hunt with the hounds. We have to choose what we are going to do. If we want carers to stay in the home and take care of their children and their sick and elderly relatives, they must be supported not only financially, but socially too. I encourage our legislators, the people who represent ordinary persons, to act with integrity, and assert that the family is of importance, and that the people who stay at home to care for their children and elderly are of primary importance and must be supported throughout our society.
Professor Gabriel Kiely and Dr. Fionnuala Kennedy, eminent economists, suggest, despite the fact that there are no statistics, that one-third of the GDP is contributed by invisible carers and workers - "support without which the common good cannot be achieved", to quote Article 41(2) of the Constitution. As I said, existing governmental policies are having a very negative effect on the ability or, indeed, the desire of people to stay and care full time in the home.
How did we possibly think we could interfere with the basic cell of society, i.e. the family, and not in some way trigger off some sort of response to the whole body? We have a growing problem with carers, be they caring for small children, elderly parents or handicapped people of whatever age, being forced out of the home by economic circumstances, spiralling housing costs which have gone out of all control, and unjust tax systems which penalise rather than benefit people who stay at home.
Carers have to go back to work and the State has to pick up the tab. After extensive research we reckon that, on average, it costs approximately €180 daily at the cheapest to look after someone in institutional care. That is a conservative estimate. I would be very happy to work at home for half that money. My own case is an example. I was caring for my elderly mother. I was pregnant. I had a traumatised disc and needed a back operation. I was not able to lift my mother. I went to my local hospital, St. Colmcille's in Loughlinstown, where I asked the social workers if they could provide me with someone to come in a couple of times weekly to help me get my mum into the bath so that I could wash her and help care for her. It would have cost them about £90 weekly. They said no - but they could put my mother into care for three months, at an approximate cost of more than £450 weekly: I was looking for £90. I was not given that £90 and my mother was put into care. The State paid £7,560 to look after my mother. I would have done it for a fraction of that. She would have preferred that and so would I. There was no middle ground, just a choice of one or the other.
We currently have a case on our books where a young mother with a small child, who due to the death of her mother-in-law is looking after an intellectually impaired sister-in-law. The sister-in-law is in institutional care five days per week. She had been looked after at weekends and holidays by her mother prior to the latter's death. Her sister-in-law is happy to look after her but is awaiting the final implementation of tax individualisation. If it is fully implemented, she will no longer be able to afford to stay at home. She will not be able to look after her sister-in-law at weekends and holidays any longer and will have to work outside the home. Her sister-in-law will have to stay in care full-time at a cost of approximately €23,000 to the State.
What kind of supports need to be put in place to make it viable, respectful and altogether more comfortable for women to stay at home and take care of their children and the elderly? Why do I say women? I do so because the vast majority of carers are women. We have 500,000 women and 5,000 men currently full-time in the home - but it is as if they do not exist. These people need to be supported by a proper tax system, one which will support the Government's own equality agenda. I spent many months going around the country with the national plan for women, talking to the Government, telling them what is needed. Honestly, I say to the Deputies and Senators present that I might as well be talking to the wall. I do not know what is driving our politicians or making them insist that the family is no longer the centre of society, but that the individual is. We are going down an interesting but pointless cul-de-sac. We have to come out of it, because we are losing people, self-esteem, dignity and money - hand over fist.
We need adequate tax systems to reflect the dignity of the carer. Adequate respite care has been already referred to.
On monetary recognition of carers' work, a small percentage of what is already spent on institutional care could be siphoned off, as in my case, and given to help support people to stay at home and look after others at a fraction of the current cost. Training and education have already been dealt with. I found as I continued to care for my mother that, the more I got au fait with her situation, the more I began to understand how to deal with her, and the less frequently I needed to call in doctors or nurses or have her put in care. We both became confident, and she ended up with a happy life. My mother has since died.
I am well aware that there is a carer's benefit, but up to 13 September 2003 only 630 people were in receipt of it. There are 200,000 people looking after others in their homes. We have two main stipulations, or strong recommendations, which we wish to make to the committee regarding how we believe matters can be improved. The first is the issuing of caring vouchers. The committee may call them what it likes, but they would be blocks of income to be given to those in need of care. That would allow them to choose the type of caring that would best suit them at any given time. The vouchers could be exchanged for home help by their relatives, and that would be the income that could be given to those who are staying at home to care. They could be given to State carers for any kind of public care that is necessary, including respite care, physiotherapists coming to the house, eye examinations or anything else. That would take care of the money aspect.
However, even more important - and this is probably the heart of the matter - one needs to treat family home carers as people who are employed in a very worthwhile job rather than as spongers. I am frequently asked, as a person whom I consider as having been employed full-time for the past 22 years in the home, if I work. I tell those who pose that question that I had never worked a day in my life until I had a child. I thought that I had died and gone to hell. I love my children dearly, but it is all work, and we all know that. The members of the committee have families and homes. I have heard some of the members talk about their sisters, mothers, in-laws and out-laws. Members of the committee must take that humanity and flesh it out in legislation and the attitude that we have to carers in the home.
In conclusion, I would like to say that everyone wishes to be independent for as long as they possibly can. Having personally experienced it with my own parents, who have both now gone to God, I can say that they enjoyed the last years of their lives. It might have been painful for them physically, but mentally and emotionally I know that they were happy because they were in their own home. There are some people who do not want to be at home, and that is all right. However, the vast majority of people wish to stay strong and independent in their own home. The committee must support that, and if it does, it will win all the way. Caring costs, but we cost less.