A young carer has said he stopped playing some of his sports so his family could pay for his younger sister’s medication. 

12 year old Benjamin Buday lives in Tuam, County Galway, where he cares for his sister, Esther, who is aged four and has Down Syndrome and a congenital heart condition. 

On The Pat Kenny Show, Benjamin described what a typical day is like. 

“When I wake up normally, my baby sister will already be awake,” he said. 

“And so, she needs help with feeding because she’s unable to feed herself yet. 

“So, one of us either always feeds her or watches over her while she feeds.” 

The siblings then go to school but once they return home, they resume their caring responsibilities. 

“When we come home, our parents work and then we go take care of Esther,” he said. 

“We have to change her nappy and take her to the toilet and everything. 

“Even though she’s four, she’s not fully potty trained yet.

“We do speech classes with her, we do physiotherapy and exercises every day with her because no therapies are provided to her - we have a rota as siblings.” 

Pat Kenny, Lucy O’Connor and Benjamin Buday. Picture by: Newstalk.

Benjamin continued that this takes up a significant amount of time and makes completing his home work “very hard”. 

“We normally only get to do it right before we go to bed,” he said. 

Despite the difficulties that come from being a carer, Benjamin added that life has “changed for the better” since his sister was born. 

“It teaches us how to love more,” he said. 

“Also, there’s a lot of problems with it; I had to stop some of my sports because we couldn’t afford it anymore because we had to pay for Esther’s medications.” 

However, he admits some of his friends have little idea about how being a carer has changed his life.

“They don’t know how tough it is,” he said. 

“Not in any bad way, but they don’t understand as much as we need them to.” 

An estimated 500,000 people in Ireland serve as carers.

Main image: Pat Kenny and Benjamin Buday. Picture by: Newstalk.