MANY PEOPLE would have difficulty in counting the number of nights they had spent away from their partner in the past three decades. But it doesn’t take Margaret Curran long to estimate that she has been separated from her husband John seven times in the past 31 years.
They were just like any other young couple rearing a family until a fateful day in the spring of 1978. He was working on a house extension near his home in Waterville, Co Kerry when he missed his footing. He fell backwards from a roof and became paralysed from the neck down. The young couple had four children at the time, ranging in age from 10 years old to just five weeks old.
“It was very difficult at the time, very hard financially,” she recalls. “He was back home within six months and it was fairly daunting. There was no such thing as the carers’ allowance and very little help. The disability benefit was about £30 a week I think. I used to do some baking early in the morning for the hotels to get some extra money.”
Now she has home help four days a week, provided by the HSE and the Carers Association. However, she hesitates to use respite care. “John would have to go into hospital for respite and I’d never do that to him. It wouldn’t be fair, she says.
The An Bord Snip Nua proposal to stop people already in receipt of a weekly social welfare payment from receiving another is of great concern to her. Margaret began receiving the half-rate carers’ allowance when she reached pension age. “I suppose it’s an easy target because it was one of the last things to be brought in,” she says. “But of course it’s not right. We had to fight to get it and now they want to take it away.”
She will never forget the early days, when she was left with a young family, no income and was receiving very little support from the State.
“We don’t want to let it go back to the way it used to be. It’s very important to hold on to what we have.”