Richard Boyd Barrett: Calls to End Carers' Means Test and Poverty

Yeah, I don't think any words can pay enough tribute to the role that carers play in our society. And those carers can be elderly themselves, infirm, they can be young people looking after their loved ones and vulnerable and disabled people, where if the state had to provide that care and those services it would cost countless, countless billions. But this is done by people who as a result of things like the means test for carers are effectively trapped in poverty, many of them trapped on poverty, many of them women. One of the disgraceful aspects of this is that it makes women carers often very vulnerable where they are dependent on their male partners. I was shocked, and I have said it here before, when I met a carer on the street a number of months ago where she actually talked about a situation where a partner was holding back on money for sanitary products. Absolutely shocking. So to put women, sometimes women who may be victims of domestic abuse in that sort of vulnerable position where they are, if you like, trapped and dependent on the income of a partner from whom they may be alienated or indeed suffering abuse is really, really shocking. The intrusivity and the inhumanity of the means test sometimes is equally shocking. This week a woman in her 70s who is caring for her disabled son who is in his 20s came into our office and asked us to highlight the fact that even though her income situation, she's in her 70s, hasn't changed for 50 years and is hardly going to change when she's in her 70s, is means tested every two years. And they ask questions like how did you afford to go on holidays? Where the only holidays she is able to do is because of the small grants that you get towards that in terms of respite. Right? That's absolutely unbelievable that somebody could be treated in that way and subject to that kind of interrogation when they are doing such a service, when they have made such sacrifice for their loved ones and then they are subject to this interrogation every two years. So the means test for carers should go. We have said that for a very, very long time. The government have badly let people down. They have clearly failed to listen to the lesson of the recent referendum, which was to a substantial degree about that demand to get rid of the means test for carers. And furthermore, people before profit not only want to get rid of the means test for carers, but as Deputy Smith said, they should be given a living income of at least €15 an hour, which would still be cheap at the price for the work they do for our society and for their loved ones and for vulnerable and disabled people in our society. I would also say on a related issue that we believe the means test for disability allowance should also be scrapped. Because that is also about trapping people with disabilities, often in poverty, where for example if you go over the threshold of €50,000, so if you are somebody with disabilities, let's remember, people with disabilities as a report shows, published in the last few years, have additional costs of €10,000 to €12,000 a year. So there are very substantial costs, but if you have assets of over €50,000, it begins to impact on your disability allowance. So if, for example, your parents die and leave you a few quid, you then start to have your disability allowance impacted upon. It is absolutely outrageous, trapping people with disabilities in poverty. So not only should the means test for carers go, but the means test for disability allowance should also go as part of actually honouring all the rhetoric and the commitment to the UN CRPD, but which is not actually honoured in actuality, in terms of ensuring real equality and real support for people with disabilities in this country. So thank you Chair for your generosity in allowing us to have this speaking spot. Thank you.