Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation Dail Éireann — 2026-01-29 ============================================================ Simon Harris (FG), Wicklow I would be very happy to meet the group. I thank Deputy Wall, Deputy McGreehan and Senator Tully for the work they are doing. It is good to see a cross-party approach to this issue. I think in all our election manifestos we all promised a roughly similar direction of travel. I spoke to Family Carers Ireland this week. I am looking forward to meeting them and Care Alliance Ireland shortly too. It is a statement of fact that carer's benefit or allowance has always been a taxable benefit. It goes out in the letter that it is approved. It is a legitimate point of debate and policy discussion as to whether that should be the position in the future. There is also the issue of the means test. There are lots of issues we need to work our way through. I would like to get a shared sense of priority if that is possible as to how we move forward. We took a big move on the income disregard this year. That is the right thing to do. It will kick in in July. I am looking forward to engaging with the groups and I am very happy to meet the cross-party group. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-29/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:34+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-29