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It is “simply not possible” to extend the pandemic bonus payment to other workers such as carers due to financial constraints, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Michael McGrath has said.
Mr McGrath said if the Government was to extend the payment to other workers and volunteers, the cost could rise to “half a billion euro or more”.
The minister was addressing questions from Sinn Féin TD Mairéad Farrell in the Dáil on Thursday, who said carers had been on the “very front line” during the Covid-19 pandemic and without their work, “the Government would have been in a real predicament”.
In response, Mr McGrath said: “The truth is that if the Government were to seek to meet all of the legitimate calls that have been made to extend this pandemic payment, the cost of it would become very large.
“You could potentially be talking about a half a billion euro or more. That is the truth if we were to include the full range of workers that it has been suggested as a Government that we should include and unfortunately, that’s simply not possible.
“We would all love to extend this payment to a very wide range of workers and indeed volunteers, without whom our experience of Covid would even have been so much worse.”
Mr McGrath added that he could deny there is “an affordability issue, as there always is” when it comes to public expenditure.
Public healthcare workers
Public healthcare workers who worked on the frontline during the Covid-19 pandemic are to receive a once-off €1,000 tax free payment under a plan passed by Cabinet on Wednesday.
The bonus scheme will cost in excess of €100 million, with the Government hoping to make the payment before the end of March.
Ms Farrell said she was “at a loss” as to why carers had been excluded from the payment, some of whom had told her they were functioning on “almost no sleep” and a lack of access to services.
“Carers lost everything during the pandemic. They lost their day services, their respite, their unofficial respite in the form of help from grandparents and other family members when we were all told to isolate, keep apart and stay in our homes,” the Galway West TD said.
“The workload of family carers increased monumentally overnight, with no time to prepare. They were on the very front line of this pandemic.
“We all relied on their work and without their work and the Government being able to rely on the phenomenal work of carers, the Government would have been in a real predicament, and I have to say I simply can’t understand how they’ve been left behind again.”
People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett said carers and retail workers in supermarkets should be considered for the bonus. He said those working in supermarkets “put themselves at very serious risk and literally kept us alive during the pandemic”.