Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 2 April 2019
526. Deputy Willie O'Dea asked the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the estimated full year cost of increasing the income disregard for carer's allowance from €332.50 for a single person and €665 for a couple to €450 and €900, respectively in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [14747/19]
View answerCarer's Allowance (CA) is a means tested payment, made to people who are providing full-time care and attention to elderly people or to people with disabilities and whose income falls below certain limits. The principal conditions for receipt of the allowance are that full time care and attention is required and being provided and that the means test which applies is satisfied.
The conditions attached to payment of CA are consistent with the overall conditions that apply to social assistance payments generally. This system of social assistance supports provides payments based on an income need with the means test playing the critical role in determining whether or not an income need arises as a consequence of a particular contingency - be that illness/disability, unemployment or caring.
The means test for Carer's Allowance is one of the most generous in the social protection system in that €332.50 of gross weekly income is disregarded in the calculation of means for a single person; the equivalent for someone who is married, in a civil partnership or cohabiting is €665 of combined gross weekly income. A married couple with 2 children could have weekly earnings of €734 net of PRSI, superannuation and union subscription costs and still qualify for the full rate of Carer's Allowance. This is equivalent to over €38,000 per annum.
At the end of December 2018, there were 79,914 people in receipt of CA. The projected expenditure on CA in 2019 is almost €840 million.
It has not been possible in the time available to make a robust estimate of the costs requested using administrative and other data of the level of additional programme costs, particularly as such a change would be highly sensitive to the income distribution in households at the time of implementation. However, the Department did make an estimate in 2017 of the estimated cost of increasing the weekly income disregards for Carer’s Allowance by €51 for a couple and by €25.50 for a single person using administrative records and various assumptions. This analysis suggested at that time that it would cost in the region of €51 million (an increase of 7.3% on the programme allocation at the time). The estimated cost of the higher increase specified in the question would be expected to be several multiples of this amount. Any changes to qualifying criteria would have to be considered in an overall budgetary context.
