I am sure the Minister is aware that this is national carers week. It is our annual opportunity to express our profound admiration for the work that carers provide day in, day out. I am sure the Minister will join me in that sentiment. In my county of Tipperary, 7,041 people provide regular unpaid personal help to a friend or family member with a long-term illness, health problem or disability. This amounts to 4.4% of the county's population. According to the Central Statistics Office, CSO, a total of 195,000 persons were providing unpaid assistance to others on the last count, with the largest percentage increase seen among those aged 85 and over, where the number rose from 1,318 to 1,776, a rise of 34%, which is huge.

I want to focus, however, on the very disturbing revelation that 3,800 children under 15 years of age are engaged in providing care to others, accounting for almost 2% of all carers in the State. That is almost 4,000 children, a shocking figure, spending their childhoods looking after their sick and disabled loved ones and family members. We have spoken in this House recently about the harsh and cruel way in which children were treated. Such actions were disgraceful, and it is right that we condemn them wholeheartedly and without reservation. It is my belief, however, that in a few years we will look back and be appalled at how we could have allowed or indeed forced these young carers to bear such an extraordinary emotional burden. How can it be right that children as young as 12, 13 or 14 are left to meet the physical and sometimes medical needs of their adult loved ones? How can we stand over this? We cannot.

All of us in this House are aware of the challenges adult carers face, and how difficult it is for them to find even a moment for themselves because of a lack of home care supports or other care packages that will give them some semblance of respite. If this is the case for adult carers, can we even imagine what it is like for the thousands of child carers in this State who must juggle school life, full-time care of their loved ones and trying to see a friend for some fun or games or whatever else young children should be doing?

I want the Minister to make a commitment to me today that this Government will put as much energy into addressing the scandal of child carers in this State as it has put into other child welfare issues. It would represent an appalling vista for us to allow this to go on. But for these children, many of their adult family members or loved ones would not have any care provided to them, and this is unacceptable.

We must salute the carers, young and old, but young carers should not be forced to do this. I salute in Tipperary Councillor Richie Molloy, who is the manager of the carers in Tipperary, and all the carers who give of such valuable time. Will the Minister give me a commitment that he will rectify this situation?

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue and for acknowledging the extraordinary work that carers do in our community. There is no doubt that a huge number of families have very active family carers way beyond the 60,000 who receive carer's allowance or carer's benefit. A huge level of voluntary support is willingly given to support loved ones within the family.

The State has over many years provided good but not adequate services in this area. I have always been impressed by the community services in our health areas, the public health nurse on the front line, the gateway to many services, and the home help services that are provided and are increasingly being delivered. The Deputy will be aware that the Minister of State, Deputy Jim Daly, has recently recognised that there are gaps in access to home care packages and that he has had a recent consultation, to which I am sure the Deputy contributed, whereby he has invited all people who have an interest in this to make submissions as to how we should develop a statutory home care service for the long term to support carers, be they adult carers or child carers. The Minister of State is well advanced in this work.

There is an obligation on us in this House to recognise that home care is as important as, for example, nursing home care, in respect of which we have had for many years now, under fair deal, a reasonable certainty for families as to how they will be supported if one of their loved ones enters a nursing home. We have not had the same certainty in respect of home caring. We have had a mixture of tax breaks, respite grants, carer's allowance and access to home help. The Minister has recognised, however, that we need to integrate that into a more coherent service in order that carers, be they children, as Deputy Mattie McGrath said, or adults, have a sustainable support on which they can depend. This is clearly a priority. We spoke earlier about hospitals and their needs, but often the unsung heroes in our health system are the carers who silently provide care 24-7. The State must recognise them in a much more tangible way. I am very hopeful, therefore, that the initiatives that the Minister of State is taking in this area will be very valuable.

The Minister of State has also taken steps to provide immediate access to general practice care services free of charge to people on carer's allowance or carer's benefit in order that some of their concerns and pressures are addressed. This is an area where public policy clearly needs to evolve, and the Minister of State, Deputy Jim Daly, is working hard to ensure this.

We have had enough consultation. It is obvious - the Minister himself admits it - that carers need support for the valuable work they do. The provision of care by children, however, surely cannot be acceptable, and I am worried about the Minister's comments in this regard.

On a related matter, in December of last year, the Minister, Deputy Harris, in response to a prominent "Carers in Crisis" special on RTÉ's "Prime Time", for which I thank RTÉ, announced legislation to ensure that all carers in receipt of carer's allowance could access GP services without charge. While Family Carers Ireland reads this as a step in the right direction, it believes it should be applied more broadly in order that all full-time carers, not just those in receipt of carer's allowance, would be prioritised in the roll-out of GP visit cards. Therefore, will the Government consider using the non-means-tested carer's support grant, rather than the carer's allowance, to validate those providing full-time care for a loved one for the purpose of allocating a GP visit card? Will the Minister incorporate this into his forthcoming legislation?

Consultation time is over. The needs are obvious. We all appreciate the work carers do alongside the district nurses and home helps, but we need to have it recognised and we need the scheme proposed by the Minister to be expanded to include all carers.

The Deputy is right that the period of consultation is over. The Minister must still evolve a set of proposals, however, and I think most people would not regard simply adjusting the respite grant, or the carer's support grant, as that €1,700 is now called, as an adequate response.

I did not say that.

It was one of the suggestions the Deputy made. Regarding his other suggestion of expanding eligibility for the GP card, there is clearly an ambition on the part of the Government to extend primary care to a greater number in order that they are not charged to visit a GP. All these issues, however, would have to be considered in a budgetary context. What the Government has clearly signalled through the work of the Minister of State, Deputy Jim Daly, is that we need to develop a more coherent policy in this area which would embrace access not only to medical care, as Deputy Mattie McGrath says, but also to the kinds of supports carers need. This is a range of supports, and they have not been adequately delivered through the existing services, good as they have been for many years. This is why the Minister of State took the time and effort to ensure that the input of people such as the associations Deputy Mattie McGrath represents, but also individual carers, would be brought to bear on designing a long-term system which would be statutorily based, so it would be an entitlement set out in law.