Oireachtas committee told profit-driven care has ‘demoralised and dehumanised’ the sector

The proliferation of profit-driven care providers has “demoralised and dehumanised the whole sector” an Oireachtas committee heard on Wednesday.

Deputy Brid Smith (People Before Profit) was responding to presentations at the committee on gender equality, which discussed the undervaluing and feminisation of care work.

Kathleen Lynch, professor emeriti of equality studies at University College Dublin, said care of children, older people and disabled people had traditionally been provided by voluntary and religious charities, and by women and so was “invisible”.

Where the State had been partially involved it had stepped back even further in recent decades, with the gaps increasingly filled by for-profit providers. “Care logic”, however, does not match “market logic”, she said.

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“Care cannot be measured in quantifiable outcomes. It is an experience, not a product...It cannot be done in measurable time because it is about meeting needs...you cannot give fast care.” Forcing care into a market model damaged the care for those giving it and receiving.

She said the observation by Ms Smith was “100 per cent correct”. The Deputy had recounted how, in her constituency of Dublin South Central, she had campaigned with home-helps in 2012 who had wanted to remain employed by the Health Service Executive (HSE).

“One woman on my road looked after three of her neighbours and she was mad about them.. She was there for them all the time... he’d spend a couple of hours with each every day. Now she works for a company despite all the protests we had to try to save the home-help system. She is tied to time. She can only spend 15 minutes with one person, half an hour with that one and they [the employer] follow her on a mobile app.

“She is totally pressurised. She hates the job. She hasn’t got the same rapport with the people. It just seems to me the whole concept of privatising and making care a for-profit business has demoralised and dehumanised the whole sector.”

Prof Lynch called for a “political and cultural appreciation of care as a political principle”, saying people must have the right to quality care and be “facilitated and enabled” to provide care.

“We are relational rather than autonomous human beings. This may seem academic but it is hugely important because vulnerability, dependency and interdependency are endemic to the human condition, and nurturing is what makes us emotionally happy human beings. I cannot understand why we do not have a national care planning unit. We know the demographics. ”

John Donne, chief executive of Family Carers Ireland, believed the “kind of model we should be moving towards...is that family has lead responsibility for care but State supports the family in that.”

He called for the carer’s allowance and carer’s benefits to be increased to about €300 a week, and to be renamed a “participation income” to recognise the vital work carers do.

The committee, established in March, is examining how best to implement the recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality. It will produce a final report in December.