Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 23 October 2019
50. Deputy Willie O'Dea asked the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if the impact on the income disregard for carer's allowance was given consideration in view of the increase in the hours permissible to work as announced as part of budget 2020; if the income disregard for carers will be revised in view of the increase in the hours they can work; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [43603/19]
View answerThis question is, more or less, along the same lines as the questions raised by Deputies John Brady and Willie Penrose. There are just a few more aspects to it into which I would like to inquire.
In budget 2020 I announced that recipients of carers' payments would be allowed to increase the number of hours they could work, study or attend a training course outside the home from 15 hours to 18.5 per week. Over 1,200 additional family carers are expected to qualify for payment as a result of this change, at an estimated cost of €11.6 million. Also, any carer currently working less than 18.5 hours per week can avail of the additional hours.
There have been calls to increase the disregard for carer's allowance from carer groups and organisations. In deliberating on measures for inclusion in budget 2020 I included an examination of the disregard for carer's allowance. In its pre-budget submission Family Carers Ireland looked for an increase in the disregard for carer's allowance of €117.50 for a single person and €235 for a couple per week. My Department costed this proposal using the ESRI simulating welfare and income tax changes, SWITCH, model. Allowing for income tax and working family payment offsets, net expenditure, if these changes were made, is estimated to be around €55 million per year. Gross expenditure would be €73 million.
Changes to schemes are considered in an overall budgetary and policy context and from an evidence-based perspective. Some 92% of current recipients of carer's allowance have no means or means of less than €7.60 per week and would not benefit in increasing the disregard. The existing income disregard and means test for carer’s allowance is the most generous within the social welfare system and across the European Union. The weekly earnings disregarded are currently €332.50 for a single person and €665 for a couple. At 18.5 hours per week, this is equivalent to an income of €36 per hour worked in a two-person household and €18 per hour worked in a single-person household.
The Minister is right, of course, when she states this was one of the requests made by the Carers Association. It was to increase the number of hours carers could work without their carer's allowance being affected. Nevertheless, that proposal was not brought forward in isolation. There were a number of other proposals which we must consider in their totality. It is fair to say that when the Carers Association requested an increase in the number of hours someone could work, it envisaged a proportionate increase in the earnings disregard as people would obviously earn more. Whatever about the figures produced by the Minister, there is little doubt that a number of people at the margins - perhaps it is a small number - will be adversely affected by what is supposed to be a proposal that should result in an improvement in their position. The Minister is also aware that of the hundreds of thousands providing care, fewer than one in four qualifies for carer's allowance. I do not see why a proposal that is supposed to improve their position should result in some of them being adversely affected.
I thank the Deputy who is absolutely right. All of the carer organisations attended the pre-budget forum, which we hold in Dublin Castle every summer, and did not ask for this change in isolation. They asked for five actions, four of which were delivered by the Government in the budget.
I am not trying to discount or disregard the enormous contributions of carers, both those in receipt of carer's allowance and the thousands who are not. We sometimes put numbers on these things and say they are saving us billions of euro and so on, but we cannot put a number on the value and investment carers contribute to the common good of society. That is why we should not tinker around the edges when it comes to these decisions. Increasing the disregard would have cost €70 million, but would only have impacted 0.1% of the people currently in receipt of payments. Our ambition in this budget was to look after the people who are most financially vulnerable. In that context, it would not have been wise of me to increase the disregard. We need to have a collective conversation, both as parliamentarians and as a society, about caring for our carers in future. We must decide how society will acknowledge and appreciate the enormous contribution they make to the common good of Ireland.
I agree with the Minister about the need for a conversation because the number of carers will increase significantly over the next ten, 15 or 20 years. However, her reply is a little disingenuous. She has agreed to increase the number of hours from 15 to 18.5 per week, but she says that increasing the disregard would cost €117 for a single person and double that for a couple, at a net cost of €55 million. It is not necessary to increase the disregard by that much to compensate people for working an additional three and a half hours a week. The people who would earn €117 in three and a half hours are earning more than €80,000 a year or even double that. Compensating for the additional hours would cost far less than that.
