An Outrage Against Carers: Taxing Compassion While the State Looks the Other Way
What is unfolding for family carers in Ireland is not a technical adjustment, an administrative oversight, or a routine Revenue exercise. It is a moral failure.
Tens of thousands of carers—many already living on the edge—are now receiving letters demanding back-tax on Carer’s Allowance and Carer’s Benefit. These are people who provide round-the-clock care for parents, children, partners and loved ones. They are not tax avoiders. They are not gaming the system. They are holding the system together.
To retrospectively chase carers for tax, after years of silence, is outrageous and cruel. It has caused fear, anxiety and genuine distress among some of the most vulnerable people in the State. Many carers are elderly. Many are exhausted. Many are already sacrificing their own health, careers and financial security to care for others.
Let’s be absolutely clear: Carer’s Allowance should never have been means-tested or taxed. Care is not “income” in any meaningful sense. It is unpaid labour that the State depends on, yet persistently undervalues.
Carers save the Irish State approximately €20 billion every year by providing care that would otherwise have to be delivered through hospitals, nursing homes and institutional services. Without carers, the health and social care system would collapse overnight. And yet, instead of gratitude, they are being met with demands for back-payments and bureaucratic coldness.
This approach shows a complete failure to understand the reality of caring. Carers do not clock off at 5pm. They do not get sick leave. They do not get pensions that reflect their contribution. They do not get recognition that matches the scale of what they give.
It is also deeply hypocritical.
During Covid, the State accepted that €350 per week was the minimum required to live with dignity. That figure did not magically become irrelevant once the crisis passed. If anything, the cost of living has risen sharply since then. €350 per week must now be established as a basic living wage for carers, paid unconditionally, without means tests, without taxation, and without threat.
A society is judged by how it treats those who care for the vulnerable. Right now, Ireland is failing that test.
The solution is clear and non-negotiable:
- End the means test for Carer’s Allowance
- End the taxation of carer payments
- Cancel all retrospective tax demands
- Introduce a guaranteed, tax-free living income of at least €350 per week for carers
Anything less is an insult.
Carers are not a cost burden. They are the backbone of our care system. They deserve dignity, security and respect—not brown envelopes and back-dated bills.
This is not just bad policy.
It is an attack on compassion itself.