CARERS PLAY A vital, under-recognised and under-valued role. They take on the enormous task of looking after a family member with a chronic illness, disability or age-related needs. However, the unrelenting nature of their work often comes at great personal, financial and emotional cost.

Carers are the unsung heroes of a society where the basics, on so many levels, are not met for the relatives they are looking after. Some people with disabilities want to live independent lives and be supported in doing so by the State. Shamefully, our threadbare disability services mean they often have no choice but to rely on care provision from a close family member.

As a result, these households experience the sharp edge of the State’s failings every single day. Carers’ work can be deeply rewarding, yet, due to poor support, is often isolating, draining and demoralising.

The last thing they deserve is the intrusion and administrative burden of a means test for Carer’s Allowance – a modest payment on which most people would struggle to sustain themselves amid today’s cost of living pressures.

That is why the Social Democrats will bring a motion before the Dáil today calling for the means test for Carer’s Allowance to be abolished from 1 January 2026.

Earning threshold

Members of this Government talk a lot about valuing carers. However, their words will be put to the test in the upcoming Budget on 7 October. Will they continue tinkering around the edges of the Carer’s Allowance means test – or will they finally scrap it?

Unfortunately, pre-budget kite-flying in newspapers over the weekend strongly suggests it will be the former. Selective leaks to the media indicate that Social Protection Minister Dara Calleary intends to increase the income disregards in the Carer’s Allowance means test to €825 a week for a single person and €1,650 per week for a couple.

While more carers will become eligible for the allowance as a result, a deeply unfair two-tier system will remain, with thousands of people still failing to qualify for a payment. The latest figures are stark, with an average of 37% of claims being rejected by the Department of Social Protection. Between 2015 and August of this year, an average of 9,427 applications were refused annually.

Any Government talk of phasing out the means test over the lifetime of the 34th Dáil will be of little comfort to the thousands of carers in need of help now. Carers make extraordinary sacrifices to look after their loved ones, often at the expense of their careers or academic ambitions. In doing so, they are estimated to save the State a staggering €20 billion a year, with their unpaid labour preventing avoidable hospital admissions and enabling so many people to remain safely in their own homes and communities.

Gender discrimination

The means test is an insult to the tireless work of carers, who are shut out for the sin of having a modest income or hard-earned savings. With care responsibilities falling disproportionately on women, it is also a clear case of gender inequality.

Means testing effectively sends a message to women that their work is not real unless their household is poor enough. It reinforces dependence, limits autonomy, and perpetuates gender discrimination.

Over 70% of carers are women, with many forced out of the workforce or trapped in part-time jobs. The means test compounds inequality by tethering their entitlements to their partner’s earnings or household savings. In effect, the system tells women that their caregiving has no value unless their husband or partner earns little enough for them to qualify. In a modern society, it is an antiquated method of assessing an application for a State benefit.

No other form of employment is treated in this way. Teachers, nurses, gardaí and bus drivers receive wages based on their work, not on household income, savings, or the earnings of their spouses. Only carers, whose labour is indispensable to the health and social system, are asked to prove they are poor enough to receive the allowance.

This approach implies that carers are seeking charity rather than fair recognition and remuneration for their work. It reduces their essential, skilled and exhausting efforts to a discretionary handout. Advocacy groups consistently stress that this treatment undermines dignity and reinforces the false notion that care is optional rather than work that keeps families together and prevents overcrowding in our hospitals.

The means test is an extremely blunt instrument. For many carers, even if income disregards are expanded, a modest amount earned by a partner can still result in the loss of Carer’s Allowance, plunging families off a financial cliff.

Complex obstacles

Family Carers Ireland has long argued that the means test punishes rather than supports. With almost a third of applications initially refused, families are being forced into lengthy appeals. Inclusion Ireland has highlighted that parents supporting a child with an intellectual disability face bureaucratic barriers that pile further stress on top of exhaustion.

There is widespread acceptance across the political divide that the means test needs to go. In fact, three Regional Independent TDs supporting the current Government – including Michael Lowry and Ministers of State Noel Grealish and Sean Canney – signed a Private Members’ Motion in advance of last year’s budget, seeking abolition of the means test by 2027.

Raising income disregards for Carer’s Allowance might sound generous, but it is fundamentally flawed – it is piecemeal, bureaucratic, and always lagging behind inflation and actual costs. It penalises dual-income families and forces many carers into endless paperwork and appeals – a draining, grinding process for which they often do not have the energy. The prospect of a small pay rise wiping out or depleting an entitlement is a constant worry.

Carers deserve better in next week’s Budget. The Government must commit to full abolition of the means test, along with greater investment in respite, training and mental health supports for carers. Under the Social Democrats’ proposals, the full €370 million cost of ending the means test could be met by tripling the bank levy.

Treating carers as though they are charity cases, whose worth is conditional on household income or their partner’s wages, is callous and unjust. Carers need immediate, real change, not incremental measures masquerading as serious reform.

Liam Quaide is a Social Democrats TD for Cork East and is the party’s spokesperson on social protection.