Sir, – There was a unanimous recommendation from the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection in their pre-budget submission in 2023 to establish a high-level official groups to scope out and develop a roadmap for the delivery of non-means-tested participation income for family carers and abolishing the means test completely by 2027.
One must not forget that people who are caring for others are reducing their career obligations because they can only work 18.5 hours. These people are providing care, which means that it’s not falling to the State to do so.
I think that these great people who are caring for others should be fully supported by the State. It’s my contention that the State should be doing everything in its power to actually help these carers as opposed to putting them through the unnecessary bureaucracy of administration and the red tape of means tests.
We see that care is so important in this country. We had the fallout from the referendum where people believed that the State was tacitly trying to step out of its responsibility to its duty to carers and to our vulnerable citizens.
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There was a lot of the sentiment from the people who voted No in the referendum as they quite rightly felt that the State should be doing everything in its power to help these carers, thus taking the burden off the State and long-term residential care. – Yours, etc,
JOHN O’BRIEN,
Clinical Psychotherapist,
Clonmel,
Co Tipperary.
