THE FACT OF THE MATTER
BY PAUL HOPKINS
To borrow from the Liberator Daniel O’Connell, if you throw your hat over any community in Ireland, you’d hit someone, many even, volunteering as a full-time carer.
According to Family Carers Ireland, there are 500,000 carers, often working silently away, often unseen by many. They save the State €20Bn, with 19 million unpaid hours a week provided by them.
Despite our relatively rich economy, most carers receive short-changed remuneration regarding the contribution they make to better a loved one’s life.
My friend Jack – my age and with whom I once often shared a pint, though seldom now – is awaiting treatment for a serious illness and worries about what will happen to his charges if he can no longer cope. It has left him asking: “Who cares for the carer?”
Because of means testing, Jack has been an unpaid carer for a decade. His wife has a neurological condition, while his 26-year-old daughter is autistic. “I have to look after my wife and my daughter with effectively no financial support,” he says. “So if I go down, then what happens? Who looks after them, or do other family members have to step in?”
Jack is not alone. Most of our 500,000 carers look after those with ageing senility, dementia and Alzheimer’s, where taking your eye off a loved one can lead to dramatic scenarios, and with sometimes deadly consequences.
While Family Carers Ireland acknowledges the Government’s first emergency package announced
In March, with the second package it is “deeply disappointed that the majority of family carers facing steep and unavoidable rises in home energy costs have been left behind”.
Although an extension of the Fuel Allowance will bring relief to some vulnerable households, the strict eligibility criteria attached to the scheme means that most full-time family carers do not qualify.
Of particular concern to carers is the failure to address home heating oil prices which have doubled in recent weeks because of the Middle East conflict. A two cent a litre reduction will do nothing to support family carers, says Jack, carers who are simply unable to keep up on other essentials and fall behind on other bills just to keep their homes warm.
Family carers cannot reduce their energy consumption. Jack tells me. “Caring takes place in the home, often round the clock. Heating, hot water, electricity and laundry demands are significant. Also many rely on medical equipment – as in my case – that must remain switched on at all times.”
Family Carers Ireland is blunt to the point. The Coalition has failed to fully deliver on any of the 34 commitments made to family carers in the Programme for Government, it says criticising the Government for its lack of action on planned supports.
The charity organisation’s fourth annual ‘Family Carer Scorecard’ has found that the Government has failed to fully deliver on the 34 commitments made to carers in the Programme for Government during its first year in office.
The scorecard has established that two commitments showed good progress; 15 showed limited progress; 13 showed no progress; and four had worsened. The areas found to have worsened include access to Assessments of Need (AONs) and specialist therapies, personal assistance hours and the rollout of personalised budgets.
The scorecard shows there were just over 18,000 overdue applications for AONs at the end of September last year. None of these applications was completed within six months.
Sharon Foley, CEO of Family Carers Ireland, has called on the Government to take action in Budget 2027 to support their members. Priorities include “adequate income support, access to meaningful breaks and services that allow them to care safely and sustainably”.
Foley says: “Intent alone is not enough. What we need now is delivery, with clear timelines, visible progress and actions that make a tangible difference to carers’ daily lives.”
With so many carers, there can be that sense of guilt people sometime feel, when, with the best will in the world, a satisfactory level of care can’t be offered in the home and a patient with particular needs has to be placed in a nursing home. Responsibilities to
oneself and to others can sometimes, through misunderstanding or insinuation, be wrongly attributed to a carer.
For many careers, the loved one being cared for is no longer the person they once knew. Like a stranger coming to live among us … but one attended to, with all the love in the world.
* If you are in any way affected, you can contact Family Carers Ireland (South East) on 1800 240 724.
