EU court to decide if full-time care provided in exchange for food and housing is ‘work’

Detailed summary

Supreme Court says case ‘raises important issues’ as to how EU rules on the freedom of movement for EU citizens should be applied ...

The Supreme Court has referred the issue of whether providing full-time care in exchange for bed and board constitutes “work” to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Luxembourg.

In a highly significant, unpublished decision relating to whether care work without the payment of wages is “work” for the purposes of residency rights, the five judges of the Supreme Court say the case “raises some important issues” as to how European Union rules on the freedom of movement for EU citizens should be applied.

The CJEU, the judicial branch of the EU, ensures EU law is applied uniformly across all member states.

The case relates to a Romanian national, referred to as “AN”, who came to Ireland in September 2021 with her husband to live with their daughter and son-in-law and to provide full-time care to her primary-school-age grandsons, both of whom have autism and complex additional needs.

Her daughter and son-in-law, who arrived in Ireland in 2013, are both frontline healthcare workers.

AN gave up a career in the financial sector in Romania to come to Ireland. Her husband had a weekly Romanian pension of approximately €119.

In January 2022 she applied for a carer’s allowance, a means-tested payment for which recipients must be providing full-time care and habitually resident in Ireland.

Her application was refused on the grounds she was not habitually resident as she did not have a right to reside in Ireland.

Under a 2004 EU directive citizens can reside in another member state if they are workers or self-employed, or if they have sufficient independent resources to ensure they do not become a burden on the host state’s social protection system.

Opening of the article, excerpted from The Irish Times. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.