The figure is one of the findings from research carried out by Family Carers Ireland, ahead of its pre-Budget submission today.

Carers in Ireland are saving the State up to €10bn annually, according to Family Carers Ireland, which holds its national fundraising event today.

Family Carers Ireland says the unpaid work of over 300,000 people saves the government €10bn a year.

Government plans to extend GP visit cards for 40,000 family carers are coming under fire.

A selfless daughter who took her parents into her home to care for them full time is Ireland’s Carer of the Year.

The Government is being urged to do more to give family carers a break.

Family Carers are welcoming the launch of consultation on the Government's new home care scheme

Sinead has cerebral palsy and Mary provides 24/7 care. Mary gets a half carer’s allowance of €122 per week. She says respite care lost in 2015 has not been adequately replaced.

Una Mc Nicholas’ weekends aren’t spent hanging out with friends or lounging on her bed scrolling idly through Instagram.

A big worry for Moira Skelly is who will care for her daughter when she falls into bad health or dies.

Ireland’s young carers are on the rise, reveals Helen O'Callaghan. In fact, the 2011 Census counted more than 5,000 are aged under 18.

Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar is looking at extending child benefit to students who have reached their 18th birthday but are still in full-time education.

Marie Hickey would be lost without her grandson, Damien, 33, who has cared for her over the past nine years.

One third of Irish women aged between 50 and 69 are ‘sandwich carers’ looking after both older parents and dependent children simultaneously.

Twenty long-serving carers, who between them have provided almost 800 years of care for their loved ones, were honoured by President Michael D Higgins at a ceremony in Dublin yesterday.

Since the recession began family carers have feared what they would face in every budget. What was austerity for the community at large hit the carers harder.

Families caring for vulnerable relatives with serious mental and physical disabilities are being stripped of vital State supports despite the advice of doctors.

A teenager suffering from cancer has been named Ireland’s young carer of the year at an awards ceremony yesterday.

Basic supports to keep people with high dependency care needs at home must be provided before a patient is moved from hospital, the Carers Association is insisting.

Parents of children with learning disabilities are almost twice as likely to suffer from depression than other parents, but fewer than half receive treatment.

Cork Carer of the Year Mary McDonnell says she will keep on shouting out on behalf of people like herself who are doing the State some service and getting very little recognition for it.

Teens with severe mental and physical disabilities are being forced to make do without vital State help due to an “unexpected” rise in demand — which the HSE was first warned of four years ago.

The Government is being warned that any further cuts to financial supports for carers will force many people currently being cared for at home into nursing homes.

Two mothers who joined a carers’ protest outside the Dáil over respite cuts last week, have won back transport services for their two profoundly disabled daughters.

The Carers Association is appealing for the public's support to pressure the Government to reverse the respite care grant cut.

More than 800 children under the age of four are acting as unpaid family carers due to chronic long-term State service gaps.

The Government has halved the budget for providing personal security alarms to the elderly, despite a spate of recent attacks on older people in their own homes.

Social Protection Minister Joan Burton has been urged to give the carer’s allowance to all 9,000 people on waiting lists as part of an “amnesty” to clear chronic backlogs.

Around 200 family carers are taking part in another protest outside Leinster House over budget cuts.

More than 200 families will make a last ditch attempt to stop politicians from voting in favour of a planned 19% cut to the respite carers’ allowance during a Dáil protest today.

One of the country’s biggest unions mounted pressure on the Government to abandon budget cuts that will hit the vulnerable.

Pressure is already mounting on Government to reverse its 20% cut to “lifeline” respite support for carers, after the move was slammed as a “back-door attack on disability” which flies in the face of promises to protect the service.

Almost 2,000 family carers are under the age of 10, census figures have shown.

Parents of children with special needs are taking to the streets of Dublin and Cork today to highlight cuts to allowances.

Three mothers of autistic children whose domiciliary care allowances and carers’ allowances have been cut yesterday brought their grievances to Leinster House.

PLANS on implementing a single social welfare payment will be presented to the troika by the end of March.

No cuts to carers payments and a national carers' strategy - that's what carers are asking the Government for today.

The Carers Association is urging family carers to get involved in lobbying the Government for a better life for carers.

Some 82% of carers say they have been affected by cutbacks in the health budget and almost a quarter say the overburden of work has left them with physical disabilities.

SHE has already lost two of her children to a rare and devastating disease but brave mother Anne McGrath is now devoting her energy to looking after her 10-year-old daughter who is battling the same condition.

Children who care for family members are being forced into adult roles prematurely as almost three quarters of young carers begin caring from the age of nine.