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THE NUMBER OF people in receipt of a carer’s allowance has increased from 23,000 in 2004 to close to 57,200 at the end of last month - an increase of 40%.
Collectively, carers will receive €806 million in payments this year. It is estimated that there are 187,000 family carers in Ireland.
Nearly 25,000 people are in receipt of a carer’s payment at “half rate” as they are also in receipt of another social welfare payment.
For example, a lone parent who is caring on a full-time basis for an elderly relative can receive €219.80 in one-parent family payment and €102 per week in half-rate carer’s allowance.
There are currently 3,500 carer’s allowance applications awaiting approval.
Social Protection Minister Joan Burton informed the Dáil of the figures last week.
She was responding to a parliamentary question posed by Fianna Fáil TD Willie O’Dea, in which he asked her what she intends to do to help carers affected by the cut in the respite grant last year.
O’Dea said that for every euro the State spends on carers, it gets back about €5.
“The value of the total caring done in this country is estimated to be between €4.5 billion and €5 billion,” he stated.
Burton said that she did not know what changes the next budget would hold for carers.
There are no commitments at this time in relation to any particular group in respect of the budget.
She added that there was “a slight tone of irony” in O’Dea’s comments as he was a member of the government that “cut the weekly payment to carers by approximately €16.40 per week … that is €850-plus per annum”.
O’Dea said Burton was “trying to avoid answering the question” and noted that she had overseen a weekly cut of €6.50 in the allowance.
Burton noted: “The current payment of €1,375 per annum is more than twice the amount of €635 per annum paid in 2002 by the previous Government, of which Deputy O’Dea was a member, and is higher than it was at the height of the boom in 2006, when it was €1,200 per annum.”
O’Dea remarked that Burton was “well aware that everybody who is in receipt of a carer’s allowance is automatically entitled to the respite care grant”.
Thus, when the respite care grant is cut, that represents a cut in the core rate of social welfare. Regardless of how the Minister juggles it up, that is the reality.
He went on to say that Burton had “successfully fooled”, “conned” and “hoodwinked” the public.
The social protection minister said that recipients of the carer’s allowance also “qualify for free travel and, if they are living with the person they are caring for, the household benefits package”.
She noted that payment of the annual non-means-tested respite care grant commenced recently, saying that more than 70,000 carers would receive a total of approximately €122 million this year.
On Friday, O’Dea launched Fianna Fáil’s position paper on carers. The document proposed a series of recommendations, including a re-examination of the Household Benefits Packages; changes to the prescription charge and the re-introduction of a Mobility Allowance.
The average wait time for appealing a decision made by the social welfare related to respite care grants is just over 14 months, or 61.8 weeks. The average wait time in 2013 was 24.6 weeks.
People Before Profit TD Joan Collins asked Burton if she is “satisfied with the processing times for current social welfare payments that require a medical assessment”.
Collins stated:
Almost everybody who comes to my office in regard to this problem has been waiting six, seven, eight or nine months or even longer for the claim to be dealt with. The complicated nature of the application is causing huge problems for people and for submitting their information. What does the Minister plan to do to address this?
As of the end of April, the average wait times in weeks for the four main schemes involving a medical assessment were as follows:
Disability Allowance: 11
Carers Allowance: 12
Invalidity Pension: 9
Domiciliary Care: 10
“These processing times are a significant improvement over previous processing times and the numbers of people awaiting a decision at the time when I came into office. The average number of weeks to decide on a new carer’s allowance application has decreased from approximately 26 weeks at that time to a current average of 12 weeks,” Burton noted.
She added that a total of €3.4 billion was spent on illness, disability and caring schemes in 2013, including a total of €2.5 billion on the four schemes listed above.
“There are currently approximately 3,500 carer’s allowance applications awaiting decision. The equivalent number in 2012 was 11,600,” Burton stated.
Collins said that “several things would facilitate a quicker turnaround of claims, one of which would be simpler application forms”.
Another would be if someone were to sit down with people and tell them exactly what was required from their doctor in terms of medical evidence. When a doctor writes to the panel and verifies that a person is disabled, very ill and that his or her condition will not improve, the panel should accept this, rather than refusing the application.
Sinn Féin’s Aengus Ó Snodaigh noted that in the past “up to 50% of the original decisions by social welfare deciding officers were overturned on appeal”.
Over 150 events took place last week to mark National Carers Week.
On Monday, the Neurological Alliance of Ireland and Care Alliance Ireland published the results of a nationwide survey on carers.
Of the 170 people questioned, 82% said they had been affected by cuts to home care packages over the past three years. Some 77% said they had been impacted by cuts to respite services and 70% by cuts to home help.
Just over four in ten of the respondents had given up work to look after a person with a neurological condition.
Over one fifth of carers who took part in the survey said they could not access any respite services.
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Global? Start at home first.
This government needs to do more to support the largest employer in Ireland, SME’s.
Great country if you are Google etc. God help anyone looking to run their own business tho!
Large players like Google actually distort the market here, welcome as they are.
You have mid level managers thinking 80k is their right, not something that is unheard of in most of Europe. Rent and property prices in Dublin driven crazy by high paying multi-nationals which destroy the competitiveness of the country.
Most of our exports come from 40 US owned companies, over 85% in fact. What a position to place oneself in.
Multi-nationals are lovely to have but they are in terms of economic sustainability and jobs they are a distant second in importance to SME’s.
Double edged sword,
Seanie, multinationals were our one saving grace when the sh!t hit the fan in 2007 so I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss their importance. They also create service industries around them which are equally just as important. And if as you say they represent 85% of our experts what do you propose replaces that? It’s not like we have a tonne of natural resources to tap into.
It is the sheer volume of the Pharma industry that distorts the exports.
We live in hope that America will not need someday to refocus tax at home in a recession or jobs at home for political reasons. What a gamble.
Our trade balance is a complete mirage due to Multi-nationals.
Focusing in on SME’s is much more important than Multinationals, they provide most of this countries jobs and spending.
We’ll never reduce unemployment just using multi-nationals, we’ll never have a sustainable tax base or economy by over relying on them.
There are a lot of sme’s that can be brought up to being large players.
Companies like Kerry Group, Glanbia CRH etc are leading global players in their fields, they are some of our multi-nationals, investing large sums all over globe.
Rental increases have nothing to do with google. It’s to do with the lack of housing supply due to a collapsed construction industry based on FF policy.
Don’t forget the planners J. They are still insisting developers build apartments in the middle of no where despite the obvious demand for 3 and 4 bed houses. I’m amazed this isn’t getting more media attention.
Govt too busy bending over for foreign multinationals and rolling out the red carpet for snakes like Donald Trump to help Irish SMEs. I see they’ve brought in an extra USC level now for self employed people. Shows you where their priorities lie.
Self employed earning over 100k. Hardening throttling enterprise is it?
A self employed person has more right to 100k than a high level manager in someone else’s business.
I haven’t much problem with the higher charge at that level but it is very wrong that it is just targeting the self employed. It should be across the board.
The higher tax rate for the self employed who are on reasonable wages shows that the self employed are actively targeted for bleeding.
C’mere to me, where do I get a job that pays €29 per hour??
Primary teacher!
Be a crappie hooker……
When is the next protest against water charges in Dublin?
NEXT Water charge protest: [NOVEMBER, 1st. DUBLIN]
Would like to see the relationship between average gross pay and net pay between Ireland and rest of EU. We have high gross salaries but I imagine they are so high to make up for all the tax and deductions. Talking Private sector here. Public Sector is another animal completely.
In most of Western Europe the tax take is much higher on average, never mind that property tax and water rates are also higher.
The tax wedge is much higher across Western Europe people, ye might not like that fact but that is still a fact.
That’s simply not true Seanie.
A useful graph to include would be each countries % spend of GDP. Most of the EE states with low cost of labour have less than 40% of GDP spent by governments. This with higher % spend have higher hourly rates. Relationship is striking
To take on them we will have to kick every high productivity business out of Ireland.
That is the key difference, most of them do not have any, at any level.
How is competing with high unemployment, low value businesses with poor national infrastructures a good idea.
Luddite.
That’s not my point at all. But I won’t waste my time or yours educating you
Why are labor costs in Ireland always so distorted?
Fact is the Irish worker has 20 days paid holidays in a year.
In Germany the Worker has 30 days paid annual leave ?
First three days of sick leave is at the employees expense.
In Germany sick pay is covered 100% from day (for a limited period of time)
The books are being seriously cooked here it is a complete lie that the Irish worker is so expensive.
However compare the wages of Lawyers,doctors and the public service teachers and politicians.
Our s are some of the worlds most expensive. The Wage issue is pure profiteer propaganda.
So what if we are still above the EU average, we are cheaper on that scale than most of our competitors. We’ll never beat countries like Spain or Portugal or Cyprus on wages, unless we consider cutting wages by 50% and kicking out the high wage multi-nationals.
We pay professional people, senior managers, doctors etc way too much, in many cases double even what wealthy European countries pay.
Legal fees here are outrageous and it is very wrong and selfish that no Govt. have tackled the Law Society here and its closed shop. It is an extortion on Irish society and deeply damaging to business here.
Ah yes, it’d be great if we could just not pay all the people that do all the work and watch the money roll in. A capitalists wet dream.
Welcome to Jobridge Ireland…
Yeah great place u can pay your employees as little as possible. Zero hour contracts jobbridge.fcukn assault on the working class
“Is Ireland really ‘the best small country in the world to do business in’?”
Not with that preposition dangling on the end of its sentence it’s not!
I guess I’m just going to have to pay a few per cent extra tax to set up my soon-to-be-highly-lucrative grammar auditing consultancy in a country with some syntactic credibility. Well done Ireland – that’s one more highly skilled job you’ve allowed to slip through your bungling fingers!!!
Only prescriptive grammarians would present such a narrow, limited and mostly historical interpretation of syntax; it belongs back in the 18th century along with Bishop Lowth. Most modern grammarians accept the proposition that language is better analysed in terms of a lexical approach.
Q. Is Ireland…blah blah blah?
A. No
Enda says it is
No
Support Small businesses
Great country if your name is O’Brien
have your say