I understand copies of our submission have been circulated to members. I propose to offer a synopsis of the key points after which my colleague, Mr. Martin Cullen, will speak about his experience as a family carer. Members may then put any questions they have to my colleagues and me.
Family carers are relatives, friends or neighbours who provide unpaid care for adults and children with a disability, mental illness or chronic condition, or for frail older people. Given that carers must be constantly available due to the heavy demands and responsibilities of caring, many are unable to take up employment and are often reliant on Government supports. In addition, there are often significant financial costs associated with caring, such as greater heating costs, special dietary requirements, transport and medical expenses, cost of medical equipment and so on. These must often be borne solely by carers.
The document we have provided offers some key statistics. There are almost 161,000 family carers in Ireland, representing 4.8% of the population. In light of United Kingdom and European figures, that is probably an under-representation, but it is nevertheless a significant number. According to the 2009 figures, approximately 43,000 of these carers are in receipt of carer's allowance. We are eager to highlight the contribution family carers make to the economy, which is of particular relevance to this committee. Family carers provide more than 3.7 million hours of care each week and save the State more than €2.8 billion per year. This means the average full-time carer saves the State approximately €44,000 per annum. At a time when the State is obliged to invest so much money to deal with bad practices in the banking sector, here we have a group of unsung heroes, true citizens of the State who are saving the Exchequer billions of euro.
We expect the committee will receive a plethora of requests for funding this year and we are grateful for the opportunity to make our case. Last year was a difficult one for the State's 161,000 family carers. In March 2009 the Government announced that it would not publish the promised national carer's strategy. Later in the year we had the bord snip nua report and the report of the Commission on Taxation, some of the recommendations of which would be extremely detrimental to family carers. However, the decision in budget 2010 to retain the half-rate carer's allowance was a welcome relief to the 19,000 carers who rely on that payment and to carers who may be eligible for it in the future. We sincerely thank the Government for heeding the views of carers in this regard. As Estimates are prepared in the coming months we appeal to the Government not to attack the half-rate allowance. It is a strong priority for carers.
The decision to impose a blanket reduction in various social welfare payments, including carer's allowance and carer's benefit, to increase the drugs payment scheme threshold to €120 per month and to introduce prescription charges were met with widespread opposition from our own members and from family carers in general. It would be remiss of us not to take this opportunity to highlight the issue. The Carers Association recognises that the current economic situation has obliged the Government to seek out strategies to enable a return to prosperity in future years. We accept that difficult choices must be made in the interim. However, such strategies cannot be at the expense of carers who are already shouldering an unfair level of the caring responsibility and saving the State billions of euro per year.
In order to assist the committee, we have identified four priorities for the year ahead. It will come as no surprise that our first priority is remuneration for carers. We gratefully acknowledge the Government's decision to protect those aged over 66 from welfare cuts in budget 2010. However, we were greatly disappointed with the reduction of 3.8% in the carer's allowance and of 3.7% in carer's benefit. These reductions are in addition to the 2% cut already experienced by carers through the suspension of the Christmas bonus announced in April 2009. While many arguments have been advanced in regard to the cost of living and how it has decreased substantially during 2009, research published in 2010 by The Poor Can't Pay coalition shows that the fall in prices for items bought by low-income households was closer to 2.2% and not the generally accepted figure of 6.5% used by the Government when justifying reductions in social welfare. Experience has shown us, and this is supported by independent research, that income received through welfare payments by carers, who are among the most vulnerable in society, is often used to cover the additional costs associated with caring. It is the accumulation of these additional costs, which Mr. Cullen will describe presently, which poses a great difficulty for carers and their families.
Our second priority is the provision of tax breaks for the purchase of care equipment. Family carers continue to experience lengthy delays in accessing essential services such as occupational therapy, care equipment and housing adaptation grants. Qualifying requirements mean that if carers go ahead and purchase these services privately any grant is forfeited. Carers who need additional space in their bathroom or a downstairs bedroom for their loved ones cannot wait for bureaucracy to catch up with their requirements. Many people in that situation will meet the outlay themselves through a credit union loan or some other means, which has a further detrimental impact on their income. We also request that tax relief be given to carers for predetermined categories of expenses associated with their caring commitments, including technical aids, hoists, medical care, care products, home renovations and private home care. Given that the State cannot always provide the necessary level of in-home respite care, there may be a need for families to employ private home care. That should be facilitated by tax breaks.
Our third priority is pension entitlements for family carers. The Carers Association welcomes the publication of the national pensions framework and the Government's decision to reform the pensions system. However, while the framework sets out numerous reforms that will assist in making the pensions system both more equitable and more efficient, it does little to address the inequalities currently faced by family carers in regard to pension entitlements. This is a complex area and we have gone into considerable detail in our submission. Members are welcome to quiz us on any aspect of our proposal.
Our fourth priority is the national carers' strategy. No commitments were made in budget 2010 to advance the publication of the strategy. Family carers are already denied many basic supports and the strategy, which was committed to in Towards 2016 and in the programme for Government, is fundamental to providing a roadmap for the development of support services for family carers over the terms of the national agreement. The Carers Associations calls again on the Government to publish the national carers' strategy in full, setting out commitments in regard to income supports, health care, training, the labour market, transport, housing and information services, with an implementation policy across several years when economic, social and political indicators permit. It is important to understand that, for family carers, the strategy was a very important roadmap. It set out a vision for family carers and it enshrined, in the view of family carers, recognition by the State of the essential work they do in assisting the State.
Not all parts of the strategy require additional funding. Those parts included in the proposal we made last year could be pushed later into the period whereby, if funding was required, it could be spent at that stage, depending on the economic conditions at the time. In essence, there is a requirement in any strategy for new and additional funding. We will absolutely concede to that and accept funding is not available at this point, and we concede this was only a fair representation of the economic climate we found at the time. However, not everything in a strategy requires investment and funding. There are vision and recognition parts to the strategy. We propose a certain number of revenue-neutral propositions within it but it is hard to understate how important that strategy was to having family carers feel they were being recognised by the State. Coming not long after the publication of the drugs strategy, and given the early stages of the national positive ageing strategy are under way, it was a very difficult issue for us to talk to our members and carers about. We would again appeal to Government to reconsider the decision and publish the national carers' strategy.
These are the priority action points. I will conclude and then hand over to Mr. Cullen. The Carers Association is very concerned that carers will simply be unable to cope as the reduction in benefits and services they rely on, such as carer's allowance, carer's benefit, child benefit, qualified adult allowance, the loss of the Christmas bonus, the introduction of a carbon tax, prescription charges on medical card holders and the increase to €120 in the monthly drug payment, all begin to take their toll. Given the need to address public expenditure, we are very concerned that, while it was not any single charge, a family carer probably comes into contact with multiple benefits and it is the culmination of cutbacks that has a very detrimental effect on the income of a family carer.
Carers are already propping up the Irish health care system and the recent announcement by the HSE highlighted the expanding role they will have to play in the future. It is well known to all of us present that, given the stated goal of the HSE and Professor Brendan Drumm to have fewer patients in our hospitals, shorter hospital stays and an increasing focus on community care, there will inevitably be a further increase in the burden on family carers. It is a policy we do not disagree with. Given the choice, those of us who are in caring situations know full well that our loved ones or family members would, if at all possible, prefer to be in the home and looked after by their families. However, achieving that comes with a requirement around the skill of the individual to provide that care to a loved one, the supports and the ability to take a break and for the carer to have some respite.
It has to be noted again that the contribution made by family carers to the Irish economy has been conservatively estimated at nearly €2.8 billion each year, yet the delivery of this highly valuable service to older people, vulnerable adults and children with special needs does not come without a cost to the carers themselves. Family carers often incur significant financial and well-being costs due to the impact of their caring role. National research projects have consistently identified that carers are an at-risk group for negative well-being as they usually have higher than average rates of depression, chronic illness, injury and poverty due to the physical, emotional and financial demands of caring. Those of us involved in family caring very much empathise with the view with regard to the stress, both physical and mental, caring for a loved one on a continuous basis can place on the individual.
The Carers Association would again urge that, in the interests of responsible Government, priorities for expenditure would be aligned to the evident needs of family carers. Investment in social welfare supports, health services, education and training and strategies to improve the socio-economic well-being of carers, as well as the publication of the national carers' strategy, are the priorities we would like to put to the committee today on behalf of the family carers of this country. I thank the committee members for their attention and I would now like them to hear a contribution from Mr. Martin Cullen, one of our members and a family carer.