Liam Quaide
Cork East · Social Democrats · Ireland
“The Department is not funding the teams. That is the main issue. There is a stark double standard here. In mainstream CAMHS, multidisciplinary staffing is treated as basic good practice.”
“I already established, earlier this year, that the staffing levels of CAMHS-ID teams across the country are abysmal. These are children and teenagers with very complex needs. They experience major challenges across all aspects of their daily lives, including with communication and learning.”
“I ask about CAMHS-ID services, which are specialist teams for children and adolescents with a moderate to profound intellectual disability and coexisting mental health difficulties. According to the HSE, and by its own admission, no CAMHS-ID team nationally is staffed to the level recommended in its own model of care.”
“This is a particularly vulnerable cohort of young people, and the lack of investment is particularly stark. The Minister of State should not look at me with an expression of incredulity because we have seen this across primary care and in child, adult and older adult mental health services. This is all out in the public domain.”
“Their needs are often more complex than those of young people attending standard CAMHS. I am asking the Minister of State for a clear commitment. When will the Government move beyond small, incremental additions year by year and fully fund CAMHS-ID teams in every region? When will that happen?”
“Worried, anxious, fearful, angry, afraid, powerless, terrified, scared, overwhelmed, abandoned, hopeless. Words like these came up again and again in a survey the Social Democrats conducted in the run-up to this motion.”
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“Our two historic coastal towns in Cork East, Youghal and Cobh, are held back from realising their full potential by the absence of key infrastructural links. For Cobh, it is the lack of a second road access point to the Great Island. For Youghal, it is the failure to restore its rail connection with Midleton and, hence, its isolation from the eventual light rail system in the city. There are real and far-reaching impacts for residents of those towns as a result. They include safety on our congested roads and reduced potential for residential and economic development. In the case of Youghal, the daily quality of life impact of not having rail is grinding and immense. When will the Government show the infrastructural ambition that is needed in east Cork to allow Cobh and Youghal to reach their full, majestic potential?”
“It is proceeding at a snail’s pace and the flood gates are of no use to residents of timber-framed dwellings such as those in Gleann Fia in Mogeely. There is no indication of when works will begin to protect our villages in east Cork. When are we going to see the ambition and urgency that is needed from the Government applied to flood relief in east Cork?”
“Last Saturday marked the second anniversary of Storm Babet. I attended a demonstration in Midleton to highlight the lack of progress in flood relief measures since that catastrophic event. I can see very clearly that individual staff in Cork County Council, the OPW and Arup are working very carefully and with great commitment in their efforts with flood relief but how can it be justified or even explained that so many residents and business owners in Midleton, Mogeely, Castlemartyr, Killeagh, Rathcormac, Ladysbridge and Whitegate and remain as exposed to flooding two years on from Storm Babet or from December 2015 when there was another catastrophic flood event? A flood gate scheme was announced by the then Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, in October 2024.”
“These cultural issues in the school are having a huge impact on children and their parents, some of whom I met two weeks ago, along with my colleague Deputy Rice. When is the Department of education going to address the cultural issues in Carrigaline Community Special School that are clearly at odds with the rights of the children? All the resources in the world are not going to remedy the situation until that is addressed.”
“Yet another young person has been suspended in Carrigaline Community Special School in the past week. There has been an alarming pattern of suspensions there since 2022. Parents have also spoken of a pattern of de facto suspensions where they are repeatedly called to pick up their child early from school for behaviours that are intrinsic to their disabilities. The Taoiseach is very familiar with the school in his constituency. Beyond the need for more therapies in the school, there is a clear school culture driving this spate of de facto suspensions, as well as the huge turnover of staff. The Taoiseach has said this is not the way to deal with behaviours related to autism and intellectual disability.”
“The Government could have asked banks which are highly profitable and were bailed out by the State during the financial crash to pay a bit more or it could continue to lean on carers for the work they are not thanked for, intruding into their finances and devaluing their contribution to society. Unfortunately the Minister’s Government chose the latter and in so doing it again underestimated carers and people with disabilities not just for their qualities and contribution to society, but also their growing political power as a movement that will bring about electoral change very soon.”
“This leaves many carers who have had to leave their careers to look after a family member who requires full-time care and support without this modest payment to provide them with a modicum of financial security because their savings or their spouse’s income pushes them slightly over the threshold. For carers who are locked out of this basic financial support, applying for the carer’s allowance and being rejected is a draining, grinding and alienating process. The Government and the Minister talked about being unable to abolish the means test in 2026 almost with a sense of inevitability and implied that proposals by the Social Democrats to do so were naïve or idealistic, but dragging out this decision is not inevitable. It is a political choice.”
“This seems grossly unfair and clearly penalises employers seeking to take more people with disabilities into the workforce. The budget was the Government’s opportunity to match its nice words on valuing carers with concrete actions that would both recognise the indispensable nature of carers’ work and also the degree to which the work of carers saves the State billions. It would have been an opportunity to meaningfully acknowledge carers’ work as work as opposed to some form of optional charity. As with so many of the basics of a just society, the Government decided to tinker around the edges of the means test for carers’ allowance rather than abolish it once and for all.”
“The vague reference in the budget to consultation on a cost-of-disability payment that might be introduced at some point adds further insult to injury. Changes to the wage subsidy scheme are a further disappointment from the budget. The scheme is a financial support to employers who recruit people with disabilities. An increase of €1.20 per hour from €6.30 to €7.50 only applies to employers with a maximum of two disabled employees, so any other employer taking on more than two receives the wage subsidy scheme on a sliding scale, meaning for the most part that the more people with disabilities employed, the less the increase. As such, Rehab Group, which is one of the largest non-governmental employers of people with disabilities, will receive just an extra 55 cent from last year’s rate per hour.”
“The findings have been consistently echoed by the Disability Federation of Ireland, which has long advocated for this cost-of-disability payment and has argued that if enacted, it would represent a structural long-term recognition of the cost of disability. It comes down to a basic matter of fairness, equality and dignity for people with disabilities. It is injurious to people with disabilities that they have been put to the back of the queue for financial support once again after being left with a significant reduction in income after the stripping away of one-off measures introduced to buy the last election. The budget was described by the Disability Federation of Ireland as "a betrayal of disabled people".”
“The report also highlighted how traditional poverty measurements underestimate the level of deprivation experienced by people with disabilities because they fail to account for these unavoidable additional costs. This is a very stark reflection of how far behind the country is in providing meaningful support to disabled people. The introduction of a non-means-tested cost-of-disability payment was proposed as far back as 2006 by the National Disability Authority, which undertook detailed costings and research at that time. This was updated in the comprehensive Indecon report of 2021. Both clearly demonstrated the significant extra costs involved in living with a disability.”
“The Government has increased disability allowance annually by €520, meaning disabled people are €1,300 worse off per year under this budget than they would have been under our proposals. A joint study earlier this year from the Economic and Social Research Institute and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, entitled "Adjusting Estimates of Poverty for the Cost of Disability", showed that the additional costs faced by disabled people are now estimated to be between 52% and 59% of disposable income. For those with more severe difficulties this rises to as much as 83% to 93%, which is staggering. These costs can involve a range of issues, including personal assistants and care hours as well as equipment, transport and medicines.”
“I commend Sinn Féin on its motion. As the Minister knows, it has been long recognised that having a disability comes with significant additional financial pressures that include the cost of therapy, equipment and transport. Despite repeated calls from advocacy groups over many years to introduce a cost-of-disability payment, the Minister’s Government decided not to implement this measure in budget 2026. The gulf between Government rhetoric and action on disability remains immense and shows little sign of closing as things stand. The Social Democrats proposed a cost-of-disability payment in our alternative budget that would have amounted to €1,040 per year and an additional €780 in disability allowance over a year.”
“I urge the Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, to engage with the Irish Council for Psychotherapy as a matter of urgency and to intervene with CORU on this matter.”
“It is recognised within the broad field of psychotherapy and psychology that it is essential to face one’s own areas of vulnerability, shame and aggression and become aware of one’s own psychological blind spots before attempting to help a client to do so. Removing this requirement amounts to stripping away part of the essence of psychotherapy and it should be reversed. The ICP is also deeply concerned about the absence of close clinical supervision requirements, no minimum duration for training programmes, a reduction in required clinical practice hours from 500 to 200 and a failure to distinguish psychotherapy from more brief psychological interventions. These proposals by CORU amount to a disregard for European standards jeopardising employment mobility across the EU for psychotherapists and undermining public safety.”
“I have the greatest of respect for psychotherapists and I believe there is much about their training that my discipline could learn from and strive to emulate. A core part of psychotherapy training is that the trainee would have mandatory psychotherapy for themselves. The ICP is extremely concerned about the removal of a mandatory personal therapy requirement for trainees under CORU’s proposals. Psychotherapy at its essence is a deep human engagement, often necessarily over a sustained period of time that requires humility, self awareness and constant reflection on the part of the therapist, what the Neville Symington called the core of one person meeting the core of another.”
“This is a retrograde proposal with no precedent as a new development in recent decades which will send mental health rehabilitation and recovery services into the dark ages where we removed people with mental health difficulties from society. I look forward to further details on the breakdown of the mental health allocations on the budget. I also want to raise an issue of major concern to psychotherapists and one of great public interest regarding the regulation of their discipline by CORU. The Irish Council for Psychotherapy represents over 2,100 psychotherapists across ten professional organisations. It has raised six critical objections to what is being proposed under this CORU framework and has submitted a detailed policy proposal on that to the Minister for Health, Deputy Carroll MacNeill. My own background is in psychology.”
“Yet there are plans to build other types of facilities, including a 50-bed centralised residential service for adults with severe and enduring mental health difficulties on a hospital site in Glanmire, County Cork at a projected capital cost of €64 million. If this goes ahead the residents will be starkly dislocated from anything resembling community living, living on the grounds of a hospital, and the proposal would be at odds with every mental health policy that has been written since Planning for the Future in the mid-1980s as well as being in breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.”
“I say consequential because we know from research and clinical experience that the early stages of attachment are crucial to later mental health and development. The crude medicalised psychiatric wards that mothers with severe post-natal mental health difficulties are currently referred to are likely in many cases to actually deepen their distress further and run the risk of disrupting those early bonds with their babies. I know from patients and colleagues that those characteristics of many inpatient wards have worsened in recent years as those services have come under more pressure a result of fewer staff being on site and the increasing demand on services. Dr. Crowe states in her editorial that nearly nine years on from the publication of the model of care, no such unit has been built. She said this inertia is unfathomable.”
“It is extremely disappointing that no capital funding appears to have been committed in this budget to a perinatal mental health mother and baby unit, despite the fact that it was identified as a priority in a model of care that is now more than eight years old. Dr. Suzanne Crowe, president of the Irish Medical Council, wrote in The Irish Independent on Tuesday of the additional suffering caused to mothers with severe postnatal mental health difficulties who are separated from their babies. This is an acutely sensitive and consequential time for both mother and baby and it is essential that both be supported, along with the mother's partner where that applies, in a therapeutic environment.”
“Until we get beyond the pay and numbers strategy, we cannot really get serious about resourcing our mental health services and that is the case from primary care up to intensive mental health support for people with the most serious and urgent mental health difficulties. Two days on from the publication of the budget, transparency in reporting is a long way off. We need to see a more detailed breakdown of the mental health allocation to analyse it properly. We need to know, for example, how many inpatient beds for people with life threatening eating disorders will be provided. We currently have three of the 23 beds recommended in the model of care. We need to know how many residential placements will be funded for the vulnerable cohort of people who have an intellectual disability and co-existing mental health difficulties.”
“Meanwhile, many people who are desperately in need of multidisciplinary intervention in secondary and tertiary mental health services will have to continue to wait extended periods because of the recruitment restrictions still in place under the pay and numbers strategy. The latter has resulted in the decommissioning of an as of yet unknown number of essential community mental health and inpatient posts, which, in turn, as resulted in an unsustainable clinical burden being placed on existing team members. Anecdotally, I know of many posts that have been vaporised by the pay and numbers strategy. The HSE's responses to previous parliamentary questions, one of which I received only a short time ago, involve seeking more clarity with follow-up questions to me only to obfuscate the details further.”
“I thank the Minister of State for being here. I commend Deputy Roche on his heartfelt and powerful testimony. I thank him for sharing it with us. In response to the mental health allocations in the budget, I want to be constructive and fair. I welcome the crisis support cafés that were announced, the focus on suicide prevention and the increase in CAMHS inpatient bed capacity. However, it is also important to state that the Sláintecare report recommended that at least 10% of the overall health budget be spent on mental health. This year's allocation of almost €1.6 billion represents only 5.8% of the overall health budget. Last year's budget allocation for mental health was 5.7% of the overall health spend, so the Government is moving towards that 10% at a snail's pace.”
“Meanwhile the Government is pouring €20 million into outsourcing assessments of need while at the same time applying crude recruitment restrictions to the very services in primary care that could provide a more streamlined and integrated pathway of assessment and intervention for many of these children. This approach undermines the capacity of the HSE and imposes major costs on the taxpayer. Outsourcing AONs is not only costly but it compromises the quality and continuity of care for children with additional needs. It creates what is known as a perverse incentive for clinicians to leave the public service and taken on lucrative private clinical work, thereby further hollowing out HSE services and preventing them from developing.”
“Thousands of carers are either shut out of this modest financial support because they have hard-earned savings, their partner's income pushes them over the eligibility threshold, or they are living in fear of having the payment taken off them when their families' finances change even slightly. The Government should have abolished the means test this week and allowed thousands of family carers, the majority of whom are women, some peace of mind and certainty. Instead, it chose to tinker around the edges of this support and impose continued financial and administrative hardship on them.”
“The Social Democrats proposed a cost of disability payment in our alternative budget that would have amounted to €1,040 per year, as well as an additional €78 per year in disability allowance. The Government has only increased disability allowance annually by €520, meaning disabled people are €1,300 per year worse off under this budget than they would have been under our proposals. That is a significant amount of money. The absence of a cost of disability payment is a glaring budget omission that leaves disabled people continuing to shoulder an unfair financial burden. The budget was also a missed opportunity to abolish the means test for carer's allowance.”
“With respect to my own spokesperson area, there has been a significant increase in staffing investment in disability services. It will be important to get a clear breakdown this week of how exactly that money will be spent. That investment needs to be followed by swift recruitment campaigns involving secure contracts and posts within services that give opportunities for progression, which will improve the retention issue we have seen blight CDNTs over many years. On the negative side it has been long recognised that having a disability comes with significant additional financial pressures, including costs of transport, equipment and therapies. Despite repeated calls from advocacy groups such as Inclusion Ireland to introduce a cost of disability payment, the Government failed to implement this measure in the budget yesterday.”
“It is clear from that Oireachtas committee hearing last week that the EPA is utterly toothless when it comes to holding companies like North Cork Creameries to account. That lack of powers, or its lack of willingness to use the powers it has, is causing devastation to our natural heritage. I urge the Minister and his colleagues, and had I engaged with the Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, earlier, I would have said it to him, to really take this catastrophe seriously and give an earnest undertaking that all avenues will be exhausted to hold the culprit responsible, whoever that is. We also need to see a rapid response action plan devised as a matter of urgency by the EPA, IFI, the Marine Institute and the council in the event that this were to happen again. That is the legitimate fear of the communities around the Blackwater.”
“It is surely the most serious ecological disaster in living memory in this country, and its consequences will be felt by local communities around the Blackwater for many years. The degree to which a dairy co-op called North Cork Creameries based in Kanturk has been chronically in breach of environmental regulations has been laid out brilliantly by Ella McSweeney in The Irish Times, and its pattern of violations also featured strongly in an Oireachtas committee hearing last week. Despite polluting local waterways over and over it has never faced any serious consequences. Paying a few grand to a local angling club or €11,000 in fines to the EPA is, let us face it, a pittance to a company that recorded €212 million in revenue in July and a 48% increase in profits.”
“I note that the Environmental Protection Agency received additional funding in yesterday's budget. That is welcome, but we know from recent events that it is not all about funding when it comes to its powers. It is also about the willingness of the EPA to impose serious consequences on entities or individuals that cause damage to our natural world. The Minister will be aware of the catastrophic Blackwater fish kill that occurred in early August. An estimated 42,000 fish died when they came into contact with some kind of noxious substance. That figure does not include juvenile fish and local anglers believe the actual mortalities are likely to be multiples of 42,000.”
“The flotilla volunteers will go down in history as heroes at a time when those with the most power in Europe did little more than take refuge in the rhetoric of condemnation while cowering from meaningful action against an out-of-control genocidal regime.”
“In 2025, Gaza has been plunged into hell and we are all witnesses to extensive crimes against humanity committed by Israel over the past two years. One of the most shameful aspects of what the Israeli state is committing in Gaza is what Israeli historian Ilan Pappé has identified as its abuse and manipulation of the memory of the Holocaust to tar critics of its genocidal actions as antisemitic and to adopt a position of victimhood based on the historical suffering of the Jewish people while at the same time committing offences against civilians as horrific as what the Nazis did during their infernal reign.”
“I was nine or ten years old when I first read about the Holocaust. I vividly remember what a profound impact it had on me at the time. I learned of unthinkable acts committed by people against other people and it shattered the rather innocent view I had of human nature up until that point. I recall going into a very dark state of mind, something akin to what the novelist Martin Amis later termed “species shame”, that feeling of alienation and disgust that comes with an awareness of what people like ourselves are capable of. I comforted myself with the notion that the Holocaust must have been an aberration so horrific it was in its scale of cruelty and destruction. Yet, of course, there have been many other genocides throughout history.”
“Political decisions are not inevitable and the Government can continue treating carers as charity cases who are a burden on the State or, alternatively, as the essential backbone they are to our society and care system.”
“Having no financial independence or stability on top of lack of supports, no school placement as well as trying to navigate my child’s anxiety and other issues has become such a worry and has had a detrimental impact on my mental and emotional well-being. I would love to work part-time if not full time again at some stage but given the lack of supports, no school placement and my daughter’s heightened anxiety I am not in a position to and as a result I have to choose but to be a full-time carer, advocate, OT, SLT, teacher, psychologist etc. The Government needs to wake up and look after carers who are looking after their vulnerable citizens. There is a choice to make in next week’s budget.”
“Carers who don't qualify for the carers allowance as they are over the means threshold are made to feel worthless as they aren't recognised for what we do and have the added stress of having to depend on our partners financially. We also then have the cost-of-living crisis on our hands with the expense of ESB, food, petrol, private therapies, various resource to help with regulating etc. I am lucky in one way as my husband has full time employment but due to his work, we are over the threshold for me to qualify for carers. I feel it is extremely unfair that my husband’s earnings have to be taken into account given that I am at home 24/7 with my daughter currently as we also do not have an appropriate school placement either.”
“She captures very powerfully the core injustice of the means test for carer’s allowance. I am a mum to an 8-year-old autistic girl who was diagnosed following a long drawn process and following a complaint having to be lodged to have the assessment of needs carried out for her. In February 2023 due to lack of services and intervention as well as the demands of trying to navigate having a child with ASD and working full time I ended up suffering from parental burnout and have been out on sick leave due to my emotional and mental health being affected caring full time for my child. People don’t see the sleepless nights. I feel that carers should be recognised for what we do. Carers save the Government millions a year. I feel we are being exploited for our hard work.”
“For carers locked out of this basic financial support, applying for carer's allowance and being rejected is a demeaning, gruelling process. The Government talks about being unable to abolish the means test in budget 2026 with a sense of inevitability, almost as if it is a law of nature that a proposal of this kind is fanciful or naive. Dragging out this decision over a five-year term is not inevitable; it is a political choice. The Government can ask banks that are highly profitable and that were bailed out by the State during the financial crash to pay more, or it can continue leaning on carers for their thankless, intruding into their finances and devaluing their contribution to society. I want to share the words of a constituent who wrote to me about her experience.”
“I thank all my colleagues who supported our motion. The Minister, Deputy Calleary, emphasised in his response to the motion that he will not be opposing it and that there is "nothing between us", regarding the means test for carer's allowance. Yet, there is a major difference between abolishing the means test for carer's allowance in budget 2026 and abolishing it in budget 2030. Within that gulf between nice words and concrete actions are the experiences of carers who have had to leave their careers to look after a family member who requires full-time care and support and who are not even granted a modest payment to provide them with a modicum of financial security because their savings or their spouse’s income makes them ineligible.”
“The Government must commit to the full abolition of the means test, along with greater investment in respite, training and mental health support for carers. Under the Social Democrats' proposals, the full €370 million cost of ending the means test could be met by tripling the bank levy. Treating carers as though they are charity cases whose work is conditional on household income or their partner's wages is callous, unjust and antiquated. Carers need immediate and real change, not incremental measures masquerading as serious reform. Reform would provide immediate recognition and some security and support for carers whose unpaid labour sustains families, communities and the State.”
“In fact, three Regional Independent TDs who are supporting the current Government, Deputy Michael Lowry and the Ministers of State, Deputies Grealish and Canney, signed a Private Members' motion in advance of last year's budget seeking the abolition of the means test by 2027. Raising the income disregards for carer's allowance might sound generous but is fundamentally flawed. It is piecemeal and bureaucratic, and always lagging behind inflation and the actual cost of living. It penalises dual-income families and forces many carers into endless paperwork. It feels like a draining and grinding process for which they often do not have the energy. The prospect of a small pay rise wiping out or depleting an entitlement is a constant worry for many. Carers deserve better in next week's budget.”
“For many carers, even if income disregards are expanded, a modest amount earned by a partner can still result in the loss of the carer's allowance, plunging families off a financial cliff. Regular reviews by the Department of Social Protection leave carers living in constant anxiety that this modest payment will be taken away. Family Carers Ireland has long argued that the means test punishes rather than supports. With over one third of applications initially refused, families are being forced into lengthy appeals. Inclusion Ireland has highlighted that parents supporting a child with an intellectual disability face bureaucratic barriers that pile further stress on top of the exhaustion of their daily lives. There is widespread acceptance across the political divide that the means test for the carer's allowance needs to go.”
“This approach implies that carers are seeking charity rather than fair recognition and basic remuneration for their work. The carer's allowance is officially classified as a social assistance payment, which is deeply problematic. Family Carers Ireland rightly argues that this is inappropriate as it frames care as charity for the poor rather than recognising it as essential work that sustains the health and social systems. It reduces the essential skills and exhausting efforts of carers to a discretionary handout. Advocacy groups consistently stress that this treatment undermines dignity and reinforces the false notion that care is optional rather than work that keeps families together and prevents overcrowding in our health system. The means test is an extremely blunt instrument.”
“Over 70% of carers are women, with many forced out of the workplace or trapped in part-time jobs. The means test compounds inequality by tethering their entitlements to their partner's earnings or household savings. In effect, the system tells women that their caregiving has no value unless their husband or partner earns little enough for them to qualify. In a modern society, it is an antiquated method of assessing an application for a State payment. No other form of employment is treated in this way. Teachers, nurses, gardaí and bus drivers receive wages based on their work and not on household incomes or savings, or, absurdly, the earnings of their spouses. Only carers, whose labour is indispensable to the health and social systems, are asked to prove they are poor enough to qualify.”
“Carers make extraordinary sacrifices to look after their family members, often at the expense of their careers or academic ambitions. In doing so, they are estimated to save the State a staggering €20 billion per year, with their unpaid labour preventing avoidable hospital admissions and enabling many people to remain living safely in their homes and communities. The means test is an insult to the tireless work of carers who are shut out for the offence of having a modest income or hard-earned savings. With care responsibilities falling disproportionately on women, it is also a clear case of gender inequality. Means-testing effectively sends a message to women that their work is not real unless their household is poor enough. It reinforces dependency, limits autonomy and perpetuates gender discrimination.”
“The Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Calleary, intends to increase the income disregards for the carer's allowance means test to €825 per month for a single person and €1,650 per month for a couple. While more carers will become eligible for the allowance as a result, a deeply unfair two-tier system will remain, with thousands of carers still failing to qualify for a payment. Additionally, many carers currently in receipt of the allowance will continue to live in anxiety that a slight change in their financial circumstances or those of their partner will tip them into no longer being eligible. Any Government talk of phasing out the means test over the lifetime of the Thirty-fourth Dáil will be of little comfort to the thousands of carers in need of help now.”
“That is why today the Social Democrats are bringing a motion before the Dáil calling for the means test for the carer's allowance to be abolished with effect from 1 January 2026. Our Government talks a lot about valuing carers. However, those words will be put to the test in the upcoming budget on 7 October. Will the Government continue to tinker around the edges of the carer's allowance means test or will it finally scrap it, as advocacy groups and carers themselves have been urging successive Governments to do for years? Pre-budget kite-flying in newspapers last weekend, as well as the Taoiseach's comments on Leaders' Questions yesterday, indicate that, unfortunately, it will be the former.”
“They take on the enormous task of looking after a family member with a chronic illness, disability or age-related need. The unrelenting nature of their work often comes at great personal, financial and emotional cost. Carers are the unsung heroes of a society where the basics, on so many levels, are not met for the relatives they are looking after. They experience the sharp edge of the State's failings every single day. Carers' work can be deeply rewarding, yet due to poor support, it is often isolating, draining and demoralising. The last thing they need or deserve is the intrusion and administrative burden of a means test for the carer's allowance, which is a modest payment on which most people would struggle to sustain themselves amid today's cost-of-living pressures.”
“I move: "That Dáil Éireann: recognises: — the invaluable contribution of family carers, who provide full-time care to family members with disabilities, chronic illnesses, or age-related care needs, often at great personal, financial and emotional cost; — that family carers play a critical role in the Irish care system, providing unpaid labour that saves the State more than €20 billion every year, preventing avoidable hospital admissions, and enabling many people to remain safely in their own homes and communities; and — that, despite their immense contribution to this country, carers are disproportionately affected by social and financial hardship, with many experiencing isolation, stress, and difficulty balancing caring responsibilities with paid employment, as documented in the State of Caring Reports and other research conducted by Family Carers Ireland; notes that: — modest increases to the income disregards in recent budgets have not resolved the underlying unfairness of the means test and have left many carers ineligible for support; — the application of a means test penalises households in which carers are providing full-time care, resulting in many carers being denied support, despite undertaking work that benefits the State and the wider community; and — the removal of the means test will simplify administration, reduce delays in payments, and eliminate a barrier that currently forces many carers to navigate a complex and intrusive process, simply to access the support to which they are entitled; further notes that: — this reform is consistent with a rights-based approach to social protection, recognising that carers provide essential care and should not be treated as means-tested dependents, but as partners in delivering care in Irish society; — carers themselves have called for an end to the means test, citing the emotional and financial toll of current arrangements, the complexity of the assessment process, and the stigma of being judged on household income rather than on the care they provide; — Family Carers Ireland, and other advocacy organisations, have repeatedly called for the abolition of the means test, highlighting that current arrangements create bureaucratic complexity, financial stress, and disincentives to claim; — in September 2024, the Regional Group of TDs introduced a Dáil motion demanding the abolition of the means test for carers by 2027; and — the Government has not firmly committed to abolishing the means test for carers, and the Programme for Government instead says "commits to significantly increase the income disregards for Carer's Allowance in each Budget with a view to phasing out the means test during the lifetime of the Government"; agrees that: — the abolition of the Carer's Allowance means test is a necessary step towards creating a more equitable, transparent, and humane social welfare system, that recognises the contribution of all carers, including those who are currently excluded due to household income; and — the introduction of this measure in Budget 2026 represents a timely opportunity to honour the social contract with carers, deliver on election commitments, and create a system that treats all full-time carers with fairness, dignity, and respect; and calls on the Government to abolish the means test for Carer's Allowance with effect from 1st January, 2026." Carers play a vital, under-recognised and undervalued role in our society.”
“Twenty-five to 30 young people attend every day. CDYS Mitchelstown badly needs investment in more staff. Will the Taoiseach's Government commit to a significant increase in investment in youth services in the upcoming budget? Will he give assurances that integration funding for Ukrainian young people will remain in place?”