The Minister for Social Welfare Mr. Seamus Brennan could have deserved an A grade award if he had adopted a more realistic and generous approach to supporting the country’s carers but his niggardly approach meant that a D grade would be more appropriate.

This was stated by Independent TD and MEP Marian Harkin when she spoke on the Social Welfare Bill in the Dail.

The Independent deputy welcomed the increase in carers benefit and respite grant but strongly criticised the retention of the ‘means-test’, or ‘mean-test’, which excluded most carers from support.  Carers worked silently, patiently and concernedly day after day and in the process saved the state hundreds of €millions every year.  Carers were not looking to be compensated to a level anything like the savings they delivered for the state but merely to have an allowance which permitted them to live with reasonable dignity while caring for those needing care, she said.

In her contribution to the Dail debate Marian Harkin also pointed out the inequity which existed whereby carers who devoted themselves to loved ones were discriminated against when they reached pension age due to the resultant interruption of their pension contributions.  Anybody who took time out to care for a person in need of care should not be penalised by a reduced pension, she insisted.

Pension anomalies also existed for many women who had paid PRSI but when they married were barred from the workforce, Marian Harkin said.  Those women had no choice as the State enforced the ‘marriage ban’, she said, and when they returned to work in the 80s and 90s they subsequently found themselves on reduced pensions due to the enforced marriage ban and through no fault of their own.

The same situation pertained to emigrants whose remittances, for instance, paid for the country’s entire education budget, the Independent TD said.  The Celtic Tiger was built on the shoulders of these emigrants many of whom were now home on reduced pensions, she said.  The Government had a duty to partly repay the debt owed to emigrants by dealing more generously with their pension needs, she suggested.

Women still had not achieved pension equality as of right, Marian Harkin said, and they should not have to ask for something for which they should have automatic entitlement.