Vol. 499 No. 3
70 Mr. J. O'Keeffe asked the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs his views on whether those representing carers have made many proposals which have not been adopted; his further views on whether it is economically wise and socially just to further encourage and support carers; and the plans, if any, he has in this regard. [2706/99]
The carer's allowance is a social assistance payment to carers on low incomes who live with and look after certain people who need full-time care and attention. At the end of December 1998 there were 11,416 carers in receipt of the carer's allowance at an annual cost of more than £45 million.
As part of the Government's commitment to carers, as set out in An Action Programme for the Millennium, an overall review of the carer's allowance was completed by an interdepartmental committee, chaired by my Department, and launched by me in October 1998.
The submissions and proposals of all organisations representing carers were considered as part of the review process and are comprehensively addressed in the report. The major issues raised by these groups were the removal or easing of the carer's allowance means test, the introduction of a needs assessment and the provision of adequate respite and other health care services.
The review examined the means test and considered that it should be maintained as a way of targeting scarce public resources towards those who are most in need. The means test applied to the carer's allowance is one of the more generous tests in terms of the assessment of household income.
Following a detailed examination of the review and its proposals on the improvement and development of the carer's allowance, I introduced a range of measures in the 1999 budget to improve and develop the position of carers. More than 11,500 existing carers will benefit from the measures I have introduced while an additional 3,300 new carers will now qualify for a carer's allowance.
This budget package, costing more than £18 million, represents a 40 per cent increase on existing expenditure and is a very considerable addition to the £45 million spent on carers in 1998, bringing to an estimated £63 million the amount being spent this year.
In addition, the rate of the carer's allowance will increase in June this year by £3 per week for recipients of the allowance who are under age 66 and by £6 per week for those who are over age 66. This represents an increase of 4.1 per cent and 7.9 per cent respectively on current rates.
Other measures proposed in the review, which will be advanced in the coming year, include the introduction of a needs assessment, encompassing both the needs of the care recipient and the carers. This would separate care needs from income support and could be used by all State organisations which provide reliefs or grants to those in need of care. The Government has agreed that a working group, to be chaired by the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children, Deputy Moffatt, and also comprising representatives from my Department, the health boards and other relevant Departments be set up to advance this proposal as quickly as possible. This is currently being progressed by the Department of Health and Children.
The review proposed the introduction of a PRSI carer's benefit to facilitate carers in employment to temporarily leave work to care. The review envisaged that this would be financed through the PRSI system. The proposal would require, for example, an increase of the order of 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points in each of the current employee and employer PRSI rates depending on the level of the Exchequer contribution. This proposal, at a cost £42 million, deserves further full examination and I would be interested, for example, in the views of the social partners in this regard.
Looking towards the longer term, a further PRSI benefit arrangement for care recipients, that is, those in need of care was also proposed in the review. Given that there is a high probability that many of us will need some form of long-term care, such an arrangement could enable care recipients to meet some or all of the costs of their own care. The Government agreed, given the complexity of the issues raised, that this proposal should be pursued at the policy and operational levels as a separate consultancy project and my Department will be progressing this later this year.
The measures I introduced in the budget and the additional proposals outlined above clearly indicate my personal commitment and that of the Government to carers, who enable people in need of care to be looked after in their own homes and communities, and the appreciation we must all have for this valuable role in our society. In addition, I must emphasise that the Ministers for Finance, Health and Children and the Environment and Local Government have also brought forward proposals of assistance to carers in the recent budget. The Government is conscious that such a cross departmental approach is required. This was the reason we endeavoured to co-ordinate our approach to carers.
Having listened to that diatribe for the past five minutes, is it necessary to have such a diary of words in response to a simple question? It makes a mockery of Question Time. How many carers provide care for the elderly and the disabled and how many of those get an allowance under the carer's scheme?
Figures can vary depending on to whom one talks. From my recollection, in the carer's review it is estimated there are approximately 40,000 carers. As a result of a survey of health boards and people working in the area, the carer's allowance review suggests there is a strong desire to pinpoint, on an individual basis, those in need of care and the needs of carers. That is why we examined the implementation of a needs assessment and set up an interdepartmental committee chaired by the Minister of State, Deputy Moffatt, to progress that.
More than two-thirds of carers do not get any allowance.
That is incorrect. More than 11,000 carers are in receipt of the carer's allowance, and this figure will increase to 14,000, but that is not to say that some of those people may not be covered by other benefits in the system under other Departments.
It is wrong that more than two-thirds of carers do not get the carer's allowance. Does the Minister agree it is economically wise and socially just to give encouragement to carers? It has been brought to my attention by the Carer's Association that, in some instances, tax is paid on the small amount of money paid to carers. Will he accept that is unfair? Will he agree that in this International Year of Older Persons care of the elderly is one of the main political themes? Does he accept we should all do a good deal more for carers, particularly for those who do not get any allowance, and that we should take on board the points raised by the Carer's Association, CROSSCARE and the other organisations which are doing such good work in this area?
I agree with the Deputy that we should all be doing as much as we can. I would have thought the Deputy would at least have acknowledged that, in the carer's allowance area alone, the estimated expenditure will increase from last year's figure of £45 million to £63 million. Nine major proposals which were made in the carer's allowance review were delivered upon in the budget. Carers got a very substantial increase, £6 for those over 66 years and £3 for those under 66 years.
The Deputy raised the issue of people paying tax on the carer's allowance. This issue was raised by the Carers Association when it met me.
It was one of the McCreevy dirty dozen.
I subsequently raised it with the Department of Finance which made the point, with some validity, that all income should be treated on the one basis, which has always been the way. Perhaps the Deputy will understand that if he is ever Minister for Finance.
I stated earlier that the Government brought forward in the recent budget a package of measures for carers across a number of Departments. The carer's allowance is taxed if the carer has other income. However, we raised the income tax level so that people earning £100 will not pay tax, which is a tremendous achievement and milestone. Many people in the public domain had asked for that and we delivered it in one budget.
Many people do not realise that the Minister for Finance, in acknowledgement of the issues of carers, to which I know he is very dedicated, also extended the carer's tax allowance, which was a very generous £8,500 but which applied only to a person caring for their spouse, to members of the immediate family. That is very much to be supported.
The Minister for Health and Children brought forward a number of initiatives in the area of respite care. The Minister for the Environment and Local Government brought forward very significant improvements in the disabled person's grant and essential repairs grants, specifically for carers.
These changes are incremental. We are endeavouring, over the coming years of this Government, to build upon the very substantial improvements we made in the recent budget.
Deputy O'Keeffe is correct in that all the carers' associations, such as CROSSCARE on the northside of Dublin, were bitterly disappointed with the budgetary provisions and the number of areas which the Minister did not look at. The Minister mentioned the sum of £63 million and what his colleagues are doing. Has the Minister of State, Deputy Moffatt, and his committee engaged in cost-benefit analysis of the role of carers?
Carers telephone Deputies every day to tell us about the incredible work they do in looking after severely disabled and elderly people. If the State and the health service were totally responsible for that role, is it not true that it would cost hundreds of millions of pounds? Carers are saving us those sums, yet the Minister is behaving in a most miserly way towards them.
I very much disagree with the Deputy, who is always full of hyperbole. I do not want to be disrespectful to him and I know he is only in the job of spokesperson a couple of days. However, I suggest he digests a very substantial document, the carer's allowance review, between now and the next Question Time. He might then have a different perspective. However, I do not expect he will because he is on that side of the House and I am on this side.
I have said this so often in the House that Deputy O'Keeffe is well aware of my attitude in this regard – it was Deputy Woods, one of my predecessors, who brought forward the carer's allowance in 1990, at an initial estimated cost of £100,000.
After an amendment was tabled.
In eight years it has increased to £45 million. This year it will increase by another £18 million. It is in my Department – the Deputy said earlier that my colleagues were doing it – that £63 million is being spent on the carer's allowance. It is a very substantial allowance and one which, as I have acknowledged here before, needed some investigation because we needed to see where it was going after eight or nine years.
I disagree with the Deputy in regard to carer's associations. Many of the carers' lobby groups were somewhat happy – obviously they were not happy with everything that was done – with the fact that a substantial carer's package was delivered in the budget and that we particularly acknowledged the investigation of the needs assessment.
I acknowledge the work that has been done for carers since the carer's allowance, which is one of the best schemes ever, was first introduced. However, I have been making direct submissions to the Minister on an anomaly I discovered during the last general election. I have been always told that the review group would deal with it, but the review group is now finished and the matter has not been dealt with yet. I will remind the Minister of the example I gave him previously.
This is Question Time and the Deputy must confine his remarks to questions.
I have no difficulty with that. I have asked the question so often that I know it by heart. What is the Minister doing about the situation whereby a carer who becomes a widow loses her carer's allowance? For example, if a married woman is caring for her husband's doubly incontinent bedridden father and her husband suddenly dies, she qualifies for the widow's pension to compensate her for the loss of her husband, but she immediately loses the carer's allowance. That is a desperate anomaly in the scheme – I have made that case to the Minister on many occasions. I have also made that case to the review group, detailing very closely the effects of this. Why can something not be done about that? I am sure very few carers become widows and it would be a very small cost to the State.
There is another anomaly in the scheme, aside from the tax situation to which Deputy O'Keeffe referred. If a carer is living in and caring for someone in a local authority house, she gets the carer's allowance of £73. If her local authority rent is increased by £17.50 next week—
Again, the Deputy is—
This is an anomaly in the carer's allowance. They steal back £17.50—
I remind the Deputy this is Question Time.
What can the Minister do about those two very serious anomalies, particularly the first one, with which the Minister is very familiar from my correspondence on the matter?
The latter issue is not an anomaly in my Department – the local authority treats this as income. It is not an issue—
I know that. The Minister should forget that and deal with the first matter.
If I am correct, the Deputy is saying that someone who cares for their husband and the husband dies, gets a carer's allowance—
No, the carer is caring for her husband's father, who is bedridden and doubly incontinent. Her husband was killed. She qualified for the carer's allowance because they were small farmers who came under the £150 income limit. She then qualified for the widow's pension, to compensate for the loss of her husband, and she lost the carer's allowance.
I do not think this is the appropriate forum—
It has always been the case that someone in the social welfare system cannot get two payments. It is an issue—
I want that to be corrected.
—that was looked at in relation to the carers' review. It will be looked at in terms of what we can do to improve the situation. However, there are anomalies and I accept what the Deputy is saying. Perhaps we might be able to look at that in the coming year.
I will write to the Minister again.
Please do so.
