Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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I move:

That Dáil Éireann:

recognises:

— the importance of affordable, accessible and reliable childcare or childminding arrangements for working families, society and the wider economy;

— the crucial role that childcare professionals play in shaping the future of our children; and

— that childcare is an essential service and it is time it was given the investment and priority that it needs;

notes that:

— after 14 years of a Fine Gael Government childcare costs remain too high, with some parents paying the equivalent of "a second mortgage";

— these high costs are unfair and unsustainable; and

— thousands of children are on waiting lists for childcare places across the State, many that do not exist;

furthermore notes other countries cap the price of childcare and it is a time to do it in Ireland where parents pay some of the highest childcare costs in Europe; and

calls on the Government to:

— make childcare more affordable for parents by increasing the subsidy under the National Childcare Scheme to deliver €10 a day childcare per child;

— increase pay for Early Years Educators and all grades initially by €1.50, and commit to annual pay increases to give certainty and retain professionals in the sector;

— urgently increase capacity in the sector by accelerating the process in which childminders can provide the subsidy to parents and incorporate the social enterprise model to make use of vacant and underused buildings to increase capacity in the community; and

— extend Parent's Leave and Benefit schemes to ensure parents have the choice to remain with their baby in the first year of life.

I am glad to bring this motion to the House this evening. It is important that we keep the conversation that has been ongoing in the past week, in particular on childcare, going, especially as we approach the budget. Of course, parents, educators and providers need a lot more than conversation and "half-baked" policies with no substance, to use the words of the Tánaiste. That is why Sinn Féin published a costed, comprehensive plan last week. I am glad to have the opportunity this evening to bring forward the key proposals in the Sinn Féin plan for childcare to the floor of the Dáil.

No matter how many times the Government tells us that it has cut childcare fees in half, they remain outrageously high. The fact that fees are 50% less now than what they were shows how much higher they were to begin with.

A survey published by the Irish Independent in April last showed that monthly childcare fees in some parts of the State are up to €1,500. For the parents affected, cutting fees in half is frankly irrelevant. These fees are unsustainable and unfair and are costs for parents during a cost-of-living crisis. That is a fact in relation to where things stand on fees. There is something wrong when we are spending €1.1 billion of taxpayers' money on childcare, yet taxpayers are paying up to €1,500 a month for childcare. That needs to be looked at.

I hope the Minister will consider our proposal to have childcare provided for €10 per day. It is a game-changer and it would be transformative for the childcare sector. It would bring down fees to a capped amount, and that would be it. It would make childcare affordable once and for all and ensure that no parent would pay more than €200 a month. That would make a huge difference to parents and children, to the preparation of children going into school and to their development.

Our plan also recognises that reducing the cost addresses only one part of the problem. People have to be able to access childcare in the first place. I recently met with representatives of Chartered Accountants Ireland. Its members are struggling to access childcare. They said it is as big an issue as housing in some parts of the country and it is one the organisation has to look at on behalf of its members. I met representatives of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation today. They also raised childcare and the real difficulties that nurses and midwives are having in accessing it as well as the inflexibility that is there in some cases.

We have major deficiencies in capacity. There are over 33,000 children on waiting lists for childcare places. In many instances, places simply do not exist. For the 6,663 children aged under one year who are on waiting lists, there are only 223 places available. These are the facts in relation to the current situation.

Our plan proposes immediate actions that we can take to build capacity quickly. The first part of that is paying our early years educators properly and what they deserve. I note the Minister's amendment refers to increasing wages in the sector. The last wage increase for early years educators took effect this year and amounted to 65 cent. It took 14 months to negotiate and they got 65 cent. That is a slap in the face for these professionals who we need in the sector, which would not exist without them. In some cases, childcare providers have enough physical space but have closed rooms because they do not have enough staff. According to a SIPTU survey from July this year, 30% of managers are having problems recruiting and 42% of managers are concerned about room closures. If we want to have professionals and retain them in the sector, we have to pay them. We are committing to the SIPTU ask. In fact, we are exceeding it, in that we are committing to a €1.50 per hour increase initially and making a commitment to further increases. If we want to retain professionals in the sector, we have to pay them. By the way, the pay increase in 2023 was zero.

As regards improving conditions, earlier today when I asked an early years educator what conditions had improved, she said none at all. Apart from statutory sick pay for every worker in the country, early years educations have not had any improvement in conditions. That is an area we have to look at if we are to improve and increase capacity. It is something we can do quickly.

I hope the Minister will consider our proposal in relation to the social enterprise model and looking at the many vacant and underused buildings, particularly community centres. That is a way in which we can bring the community with us on childcare. It works and exists already. I hope the Minister will look at that proposal.

Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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I commend Deputy Kerrane not only on bringing the motion to the Dáil tonight and allowing us to debate this important issue but also on bringing this policy forward in the short time that she has been spokesperson on childcare for our party. The Deputy mentioned that this is a game-changer and that is exactly what it is. Talking to parents in my constituency over the weekend, that is the language they used because, as the Minister will be aware, the cost of childcare in my county ranges from €600 to €1,200. The idea that young couples would get childcare for €10 per day and not have to wait years to get it, and that Sinn Féin in government would deliver it from next year on, is a game-changer for them and for their finances in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.

It is also the appropriate thing and right thing to do. Not only do we deliver a €10-a-day childcare guarantee for everybody in formal childcare settings and for those childminders already registered with Tusla, but Sinn Féin's plan, under Deputy Kerrane, is to extend that to all childminders across the State through a registration process. That is the exciting part of this. It looks at the issue of capacity and affordability, not only from the parents' point of view in that €10-a-day childcare pledge but also in relation to the providers and the issues that they need addressed in terms of a major contingency fund to address their core funding needs after an appropriate review.

There are capacity issues within the sector, many of which have been building up because of Government inaction. As Deputy Kerrane said, the first and best step to start to deal with that is for us to pay early years educators an appropriate wage. An immediate pay increase of €1.50 per hour needs to be delivered to ensure early years educators are paid a more appropriate rate. Importantly, there should be, as we have in our plan, a contingency fund to ensure there are wage increases every year after that to make sure we recognise the value of those in whose care we entrust our children.

I commend this policy which I believe is a game-changer. It is one of the most exciting policies I have seen come before the House. It can be done and has been done in Canada. In parts of Canada, $10-per-day childcare has been pledged.

Under Sinn Féin, parents will have that same commitment. You will get your childcare for €10 per day - no more, no less.

Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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I commend an Teachta Clare Kerrane on bringing forward this policy and Kathleen Funchion for the work she has done in this area. Access to affordable childcare is a game-changer. I hope the Minister knows that. He certainly has not delivered but an Teachta Kerrane has the plan and the ideas - €10 per day per child. That is exactly what parents need. They need certainty and they need to know their childcare is going to be affordable. My daughter was born when I was 21. I was faced with a very stark choice, namely I could stay at home, mind her and drop out of college because we could certainly could not have afforded the childcare. However, because I was able to access affordable subsidised childcare, I was able to work and complete my degree and we were able to settle and build our wee family. It was essential. My life would be so different if we had not had access to affordable childcare. It is a necessity for families.

I saw the Minister's amendment. I do not know if parents will thank him for throwing bouquets at himself but he is certainly doing an awful lot of that with his words. Let us look at the facts. The facts are that childcare is still unaffordable and I sincerely hope that the Minister has the humility to acknowledge that in his script. Childcare is still unaffordable for parents and our early years educators are not paid enough. There are many elements to the Sinn Féin fully costed plan but for those two, costs must come down. Sinn Féin has the plan and will deliver - €10 per day per child. It is a game-changer. If the Minister talks to parents, they will tell him that it is not just what they want, it is what they need. It gives them certainty. It means that they can plan. For our early years educators, at 65 cent per hour, I think they got the message from the Minister about how much their education and contribution are valued. Not only have we provided for a decent increase - €1.50 per hour - we have contingency for further increases. I urge the Minister to withdraw his shameful amendment and support our fully costed plan.

Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Deputy Kerrane for bringing forward this motion. The Sinn Féin plan to deliver childcare at €10 per day or €200 per month is visionary and ambitious but it is also realistic and achievable. In that regard, all we have to do is look to the likes of Denmark and Sweden for examples. In Meath, on the basis of CSO figures, almost 10,300 children would benefit from this measure immediately. By introducing it, we would lift a massive financial burden from families. In Meath, families are paying between €800 and €1,150 per child per month in childcare fees. Sinn Féin's proposal would reduce this to €200 per month. That is a saving of between €600 and €950 per month. This would be transformational. It would lift a massive financial burden from families and in doing so, give people some relief and allow them to draw breath and lift their head. For most, it would give them the chance to pay down some other debt. It would give the lucky ones - and that is the hope for us all - a chance to spend more time with friends and family and in their communities. Affordability is crucial and Sinn Féin has a plan to deliver it.

Like affordability, capacity is also crucial. It is no good being able to afford childcare if you cannot access it in the first place. In Meath, access is a major issue. In 2022-23, 38% of services had waiting lists. They are sure to be even longer now. We have long-promised crèches that are years in development. I think of the Willows in Dunshaughlin, which was granted planning in July after years of waiting or Millerstown in Kilcock, where a purpose-built crèche has been lying vacant 18 months after completion. The Sinn Féin plan would deliver affordable childcare and address the issues of capacity and recruitment and retention in the sector. It is an excellent plan and the Minister should adopt it.

Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein)
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The plan that has been unveiled by Deputy Kerrane is visionary. It is a really exciting policy that can be a game-changer. Delivering childcare for €10 per child per day is essential and I would emphasise that. This is not a policy that the Minister should implement because it is a good or sensible policy. It is a necessary policy. It has to happen. It is a strategic imperative for the State. It is crucial for families to be able to prosper and to be able to afford to make ends meet. There are many couples out there who are thinking of starting a family and the cost of childcare is one of the things that discourages them. We do not have affordable childcare in this State regardless of whatever steps or changes have been made. In Cork, if you have two children in full-time childcare, you are probably looking at €1,500. Even if you have one who might be in an ECCE facility, you are still talking about €1,200. This is a huge sum of money. It is another mortgage. That is crippling for families and is discouraging people from going back to work and having a child or a second child. It is not good enough.

The plan that has been unveiled by Deputy Kerrane and the team around her lays the foundation for finally taking this issue seriously enough, valuing it as early years education, ensuring the workers and staff are valued and ensuring that the sector is sustainable and the places are available. Tá mé ag impí ar an Aire. Tá sé seo riachtanach don todhchaí, don Stát seo, do theaghlaigh agus dúinn go léir. Ní féidir linn fanacht a thuilleadh. Tá muid ag caint faoin ábhar seo ar feadh na mblianta gan mórán dul chun cinn. Caithfidh muid tionchar a dhéanamh. This visionary policy has to be implemented. I am certain it will be a sea change for families and for us as a country and a society.

Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I commend Deputy Kerrane on bringing forward this motion and on the work she has done on the policy and commend her predecessor, the former Deputy Kathleen Funchion, on all the work she did in this area as well.

Childcare needs to be affordable, accessible and reliable but it is not any of those things at the moment. An average cost of €800 per month is not affordable. Many parents pay a great deal more than €800. That is not sustainable and many are forced to reduce their work or leave work, particularly women. It is affecting them more than anyone.

I am contacted on a regular basis by parents whose maternity leave is coming to an end and they are panicking because they need to go back to work but cannot find a place to put their child. Most facilities do not accept children under the age of one. Many do not even accept children up to the age of two. They are forced to take unpaid leave they can ill afford. Often they have to give up their job because they cannot get someone to mind their child. We need to invest in community childcare in particular and provide a lot more places.

Recruitment and retention in childcare facilities are ongoing problems. We have professional childcare workers who are essential in shaping children's futures and childcare needs to be recognised as an essential service. The workers need to be paid properly. They are leaving that work not because they want to but because they have no choice because of cost-of-living pressures and are going into other jobs like SNAs in schools because they cannot stay in the job they want to do. According to the latest OECD report, Ireland ranks among the lowest in government funding for early years at only 0.1% of GDP compared with 1.5% in many other countries.

A Sinn Féin Government would make childcare more affordable and would increase the national childcare scheme subsidy. We are aiming for €10 per day similar to models in many other Scandinavian countries and parts of Canada. We propose raising early years educators' pay by €1.50 initially, with annual increases designed to retain staff. We need to plan and speed up the process for childminders, offer subsidies and make use of vacant buildings for childcare. Other things that need to be addressed are the bureaucracy and paperwork childcare providers are expected to deal with. It is ridiculous, very demanding of their time and unfair.

Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)
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Childcare should be a public service. Adequate childcare should be a help to parents, not be a financial burden. It is often said that childcare is akin to having a second mortgage, with the average cost running from €800 per month and with many parents in Dublin West paying far more than that. The current system is a deterrent for parents, in particular single parents, to take up employment or further education, it is a deterrent to having more than one child and it makes it next to impossible to pay childcare and save for a deposit on a home. It is estimated that a lone parent with two children needs to earn €40,000 to cover the cost of full-time private care. How many are earning that?

Sinn Féin's proposal is to deliver a €10 a day scheme by bridging the gap between this and the actual cost, and it will be done by subsidising providers while implementing fee controls to ensure value money for the State. I spoke to a parent yesterday to outline our proposals. She was completely in shock and asked how this can be delivered, but I told her that it can be if she puts Sinn Féin in there. The private sector in childcare has been given carte blanche to repeatedly put up the price of childcare. Consideration should be given to price caps similar to those in place in Norway, Sweden and Finland. All children should have the opportunity for childcare to aid their intellectual development and interpersonal skills.

Those working in the sector need to be provided for. The Sinn Féin plan would increase the hourly wage of childcare workers by €1.50, with €53.8 million being ringfenced for wages. In the Sinn Féin childcare plan, we have pledged to invest approximately €100 million to allow parents to take leave for the entire first year of a child's life. Again, that year is one of the most important times in a child's life and it is important to have a parent around them in the first year. However, for many people, that is a luxury when it should not be a luxury. It should be something that is seen as normal. This will allow parents to spend more time with their child during the formative years. The plan is fair to parents, children, childcare providers and workers. It is time that the Government got out of the way and let Sinn Féin implement a childcare plan that works for people.

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after "Dáil Éireann" and substitute the following: "welcomes that:

— the present Government has implemented the most significant reform agenda to early learning and childcare in the history of the State;

— total Government investment in early learning and childcare has almost doubled since 2020, rising to €1.1 billion this year, well in excess of the First 5 annual State investment target of €970 million by 2028, which was exceeded five years earlier than planned; and

— Core Funding has acted as the lynchpin to achieving the unprecedented simultaneous goals of providing stabilising investment in services, improving the quality-of-care children receive, increasing pay and improving conditions for staff, and halving average early learning and childcare costs for parents, noting in particular that:

— provision for Core Funding has increased from €259 million in Year 1 to €331 million this year;

— fees in partner services have remained frozen, enabling record investment into the National Childcare Scheme (NCS); out of pocket costs for parents have fallen by up to 50 per cent for users of full-time early learning and childcare, and NCS universal subsidies are now worth up to €5,000 per child per year;

— this year a fee cap has been introduced for the first time in new partner services, extending to all partner services next year, creating a maximum price that can be charged for early learning and childcare and bringing fees down yet further; and

— successive employment regulation orders supported by Core Funding have increased pay for, and improved conditions for, early years educators and school-age childcare practitioners for the first time, as well as aided development of career pathways in the sector, in line with Nurturing Skills, the Workforce Plan for Early Learning and Care and School-Age Childcare (2022-2028);

recalling that:

— the estimated number of enrolments in services rose by 8 per cent, from 197,210 to 213,154, between September 2021 and September 2023;

— between Year 1 and Year 2 of Core Funding, annual place hours increased by 7.4 per cent;

— data from Tusla shows a net increase of 129 in the overall number of services in 2023 and a five year low in the number of net Early Learning Care (ELC) services closures -with ELC service closures falling by 18 per cent since the introduction of Core Funding;

— the estimated number of staff in the early learning and childcare workforce rose by 8 per cent, from 34,357 to 37,060, between September 2021 and September 2023; and

— data from the NCS showing that since 2022, there has been a 22 per cent increase in the number of providers offering the Scheme, a 977 increase in the numbers of children benefitting from the Scheme, and a 52 per cent increase in the number of sponsored children, and in 2024 to date, almost 200,000 children have benefited from the NCS;

further welcoming:

— the continued success of the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme, which enjoys uptakes rates in excess of 96 per cent and has removed barriers to accessing pre-school education, with data from a recent review showing that more than 40 per cent of families would not have been able to send their child to pre-school without this programme;

— the growth of the award-winning Access and Inclusion Model (AIM), now supporting more than 7,000 children with a disability each year;

— the roll-out of Equal Start, a new funding model and set of universal and targeted measures to support access to, and participation in, early learning and childcare for children and their families who experience disadvantage;

— the major progress in implementation of the National Action Plan for Childminding (2021-2028), with new regulations commencing on 30th September making it possible for childminders to register with Tusla and participate in the NCS; and

— the combined durations of Maternity, Paternity and Parent's Leave and Benefit, which is now 46 weeks, almost covering the first full year of every child's life;

whilst also noting that:

— the policy document 'Sinn Féin's Childcare Plan' recently announced by that party betrays a distinct lack of vision for the delivery of early learning and childcare as a public good;

— the aforementioned plan makes no mention of a public model for future delivery of early learning and childcare, instead relying on a primarily privatised delivery model, funded largely by the taxpayer;

— successive Sinn Féin budget submissions on early learning and childcare failed to keep pace with the Government's own investment record over the same period;

— the plan fails to acknowledge that it is solely because of the extensive reforms and record investment into early learning and childcare by the current Government that delivery of affordable accessible and quality early learning and childcare is possible, and is happening; and

— the Sinn Féin plan effectively endorses the Government's approach over the last four years, seeks to build on it but offers no ultimate vision of what kind of early years model citizens should expect for their investment; and

welcomes the fact that:

— because of the reforms undertaken by the current Government, a public model for the delivery of early learning and childcare is finally a real possibility, which will bring Ireland into line with other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, having amongst the best quality services, accessible and affordable to all;

— with the right future investment the State can move towards guaranteeing a place for every child in early learning and care; and

— State investment into early learning and childcare is now amongst the most effective uses of taxpayer money towards a public good, thanks to the Together for Better Funding Model, ensuring that new investment works to increase affordability, increase availability, value professionals and put providers on a sure footing.".

I congratulate Deputy Kerrane and wish her well in her new role.

This motion is a welcome opportunity to discuss the importance of early learning and childcare. I have no doubt that Deputies from all sides of the House will agree on the value of childcare and early learning in the lives of children, their parents and across society more broadly. Over the last four years, I have spoken to many parents who have told me about the central role early years professionals play in their lives and their children’s lives, the deep trust they place in these women and men to take care of their children and the gratitude they have to them for so doing. It is in early years settings where children get their first experience of formal education, carefully guided by the early years professionals who demonstrate such passion and dedication to their work. Affordable, accessible and high-quality childcare is ultimately a marker for the kind of country we want Ireland to be, one that values children, values the people who care for children, supports parents in those early years and allows parents to return to work as they wish to.

Unfortunately, for many years, the Irish State did not understand or provide for early years and childcare as a public good. From being bottom of the European pack, we have had to make huge strides to implement the kind of service that every child in Ireland deserves so they can have what families in many other countries have enjoyed for decades. That is why, under this Government, we have seen the most extensive programme of reform ever undertaken in the area of early learning and childcare. It is under this Government that the State has, for the first time, recognised childcare as a public good, one that demands more investment and involvement by the State and a close working partnership with providers, with new responsibilities on both sides.

While there is still work to do, my record on childcare is clear. Over the last four years, investment in childcare has doubled from €638 million to €1.2 billion, and this is a figure that I intend to grow in this year’s budget. In the last two years, we have cut fees by half on foot of the extra investment I have made in the national childcare scheme. Pay for staff has increased thanks to a first-ever sector pay agreement backed by Government funding. The number of service closures is the lowest it has been for five years while the number of enrolments, place hours and staff have all increased over the last five years. Fundamentally, we have more staff, with better pay, delivering more childcare at lower cost.

I welcome that Sinn Fein’s document recognises this, in particular with regard to core funding. However, its policy betrays a lack of ambition. The reality is that the Sinn Féin plan offers no vision for the delivery of early learning and childcare as a public good. It makes no reference to a public model for the future delivery of early learning and childcare, instead relying on a purely privatised delivery model, funded largely by the taxpayer. Rather than offering a vision of how the State can continue to build on the reforms, investment and direction undertaken in the last four years, it reverts to reliance on the private market. I believe that parents and children in this country deserve better. Only the State can guarantee access to the two years of the ECCE scheme, only the State can bring down costs for parents and only the State can ensure early years professionals pay increases to recognise the incredible work they do. That is what I have worked hard to do over the past few years: to increase the State’s role in the provision of early learning and childcare.

I have also placed on record my view that it cannot be left entirely to the market and that the next steps are for the State to become a direct provider of early learning and childcare in areas of high need and areas where there are not enough spaces right now. Early learning and childcare is not as simple as a catchy headline. The combined challenges of staff pay and conditions, capacity, accessibility and service sustainability have to be addressed and I want to set out the work I have done to address these areas.

At the centre of the reforms I have brought in is core funding. This was introduced in 2021 and, for the first time, brought the State into a formal partnership with childcare providers. It provided a massive injection of funding of €259 million in the first year, €287 million in the second year and €331 million this year, and this is new funding that goes directly to services. As services come into contracts with the State, this funding has provided the bedrock for the introduction of a new fee management system – the fee freezes Deputy Donnelly has called for – and this has stabilised fees during a cost of living crisis. It introduced a requirement for services to offer the NCS subsidy to all eligible families, which has led to a 22% increase in the number of services offering the NCS. It supported the introduction of two employment regulation orders for the early years sector in September 2022 and June 2024, providing, for the first time, sector-wide minimum hourly rates of pay for early years educators. It introduced targeted measures for the smallest services, which I know are valued by many parents around the country, including a flat rate of €5,000 for sessional-only services and a minimum base rate allocation of €14,000 for small services.

It is important to say that core funding is working. In the first year, 95% of services signed up to core funding; it was 94% last year and we are currently on track to exceed 90% sign-up this year. It is keeping services going. The number of new service openings is at a five-year high for the year to date and the number of service closures is at a five-year low. Figures are often trotted out about services opening and closing but it is important to restate that point: the number of new service openings is at a five-year high and the number of service closures is at a five-year low.

Core funding, by introducing a freeze on fees, allows the full benefit of the national childcare scheme to be felt. We have grown the universal subsidy from 50 cent per hour in 2022 to €2.14 now. As a result, there has been a 97% increase in the take-up of the NCS. In 2022, 99,000 children got a benefit from the NCS but that has increased to 195,000 this year.

I know that while the cost of childcare is reducing, accessibility remains an issue for many parents around the country. We want to ensure that every child, no matter their background, is able to enjoy the benefits of early learning and childcare. That is why we introduced Equal Start, our DEIS model for early years, to support access to early learning and childcare for children and their families who experience disadvantage.

Yesterday I had the privilege of visiting Corduff Childcare Service in my Dublin West constituency, one of 750 services that will support targeted supports under Equal Start. The manager, Noeleen, told me what Equal Start would mean to her service and her ability to employ additional staff.

This month again through extra investment, this Government expanded the access and inclusion model, AIM, beyond the early childhood care and education, ECCE, programme. Now ECCE-aged children are now eligible for AIM hours outside the ECCE programme hours, both in term and outside of it. We recognise that capacity remains an issue and a struggle for parents in many parts of this country.

We have set up a supply management unit in our Department. It is putting in place a forward planning model which will allow us to identify the number of early learning and childcare places across the country, whether those places are occupied and how that aligns with the number of children in the relevant age cohorts in that particular area. Next year €25 million will be available in capital funding so that services can expand, new services can expand and new services can be set up.

Just this morning, I briefed the Cabinet on my actions to open up the NCS to parents who use childminding services.

All of us in this House share a determination to ensure the State supports every single child during the critical first five years in a way that gives him or her the very best possible start in life. It is the most important investment a State can make. From the unprecedented reforms to childcare in both universal and targeted supports to the expansion of parental choice through support for childminders, the introduction of flexible working for care purposes and the expansion of paid parent's leave from two to nine weeks per parent per year; I believe the work I have done as Minister has moved the dial on our State’s support to our youngest.

Crucially, these changes have set us on a clear path, with a clear vision of accessible, low-cost, high-quality early learning and care as a right and public good. The next steps I believe we need to take are to create a legal guarantee of an ECCE place, to ensure the State takes a role in directly providing early learning and childcare, and to provide for further increases in pay for our early years professionals. All of this must be backed by greater levels of State investment. As leader of the Green Party, I have committed my party to advance these key proposals in the next Dáil. I urge all parties and all Deputies in this House to do likewise.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Deputy Quinlivan is sharing time with Deputies Martin Browne, Cronin and Ellis.

Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Ceann Comhairle. Too many families are paying what is in many cases equivalent to a second mortgage when it comes to childcare. Having to contend with the astronomical price of childcare puts severe stress on families from all socioeconomic backgrounds. Regardless of ability to pay, there is the initial stress of sourcing a childcare provider. I am dealing with a family who live in the Dooradoyle area of Limerick. They have had to take two weeks of leave from their job because they simply cannot find a crèche with space available for their child. They are on a waiting list in several childminding facilities but have had no success in finding a place. They are organised people who have done their best to find a crèche. They did not approach this at the last minute and yet they still cannot find a place for their infant. This is not a unique situation.

I spoke today to a person in a childminding facility in Limerick who told me that it has a waiting list of more than 200 children. We have great childminding facilities in Limerick. I would specifically like to mention Our Lady of Lourdes Childworld Crèche in Ballinacurra Weston; the Northside Family Resource Centre in Ballynanty, where I grew up; and the Family Tree Crèche in the Limerick Enterprise Development Partnership on Childers Road. These are all top-class childcare facilities.

When it comes to childcare, there are two specific challenges that we as legislators must address. We must ensure that childcare is both accessible and affordable. That is why the Sinn Féin policy of €10 a day is fair, equitable and deliverable. We must ensure that our childcare professionals, who are vital in shaping the development of many young children, are rewarded fairly for the vital and caring work they do. The motion in our childcare plan, Better for Childcare, addresses both requirements. Our plan wants to give children the best start in life and allows parents to remain in work in the safe knowledge that their child is cared for safely in a secure environment.

We have been strong advocates for those working in the childcare sector for many years. Our proposals will meet the desires of childcare and of parents. The key portion of the policy that we are putting forward is €10 per day per child which is very achievable and fair.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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I commend Deputies Kerrane and Funchion on putting this motion together and bringing it to the House. Despite the lack of a coherent message or plan from the Government parties about the structure of childcare going forward, Sinn Féin’s policy and its plans are clear and costed and are designed to address the immediate needs of parents and the sector. The system, as it is currently designed, is not in line with what the Minister has just told us. It does not work effectively for parents, for many children and or for early years providers.

Sinn Féin has stepped up with a clear plan that offers a real hope of change and affordability. To invest €345 million to deliver €10 per day childcare for parents is not too much to ask for parents who are struggling with the high cost of childcare and general living.

If we want our childcare professionals to remain in the sector here, they must be paid a decent wage and have their efforts to gain advanced qualifications acknowledged. That is why we provide for €53.8 million in funding for a €1.50 hourly wage increase for workers in the sector to improve retention and increase capacity though improved viability of services. A contingency fund would also be in place to cover increases in the future.

Regarding capacity, we aim to incorporate self-employed childminders if possible into our scheme, with Tusla-registered childminders targeted in the first year. This approach would also bring about stability in the sector.

We would also bring community buildings into use which will be of particular benefit for some small early years providers I have spoken to. We are also committing to a full review of core funding with full transparency from providers so we can establish where costs have increased, its impact on viability, and the changes needed to ensure viability.

Other countries cap the price of childcare. It is time we did so instead of expecting parents to pay some of the highest childcare costs in Europe. Sinn Féin will make Ireland a better place to raise a family and build a future.

Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein)
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I was amused on the first day of the new term to see the words "public good" in the Government amendment. Between the lot of you, you would not know public good from public bad if it jumped up and bit you. There is the overpriced daylight-robbery bike shed or the abuse of Irish airspace to commit genocide in Gaza. All of a sudden when Sinn Féin publishes its childcare plan, the Government is out of its private traps on the public road to Damascus. Who is it kidding? It knows full well that our plan is an emergency intervention to keep families going now while we build a proper public service in childcare because parents cannot wait any longer. They need our help now.

North Kildare mothers are desperate to find childcare places for their babies. These are highly qualified women, some of them teachers, and this is why we have a teacher shortage. Imagine a shortage in the public good of the education system.

Thankfully, the Sinn Féin childcare policy is a game changer in the care of our children with €10 per day. Is rud iontach é an obair a rinne an Teachta Claire Kerrane san ábhar tábhachtach seo. Unlike the Government Deputies, with their devotion to vultures, cuckoos and appeasing Apple billionaires; republican politics lives and breathes public good. With us, the current €800 childcare costs would drop to €200 a month. That is a saving of €600. I know that €600 may not seem like a lot when the Government can lash out €336,000 on a bike shed but for parents in north Kildare, that saving would mean that they can have a life and that they can afford the price of a new washing machine or a child's school trip because life is short. I say to the Government to get back into its private box and leave the public good to the politicians who know and defend it. Sinn Féin will make social provision a reality and not just a cheap election promise.

Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein)
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Working parents who are trying to hold down a job and at the same time care for young children find it difficult and stressful to do both. This is particularly acute when there is no family member who can act as a caregiver to the child or if the job has no flexibility in working hours. These days few parents can afford to stay at home because of the ever-increasing cost of living, the runaway rents, and so on. A single income is just not sufficient to maintain a decent standard of living or for a family to stay financially afloat. The cost of childcare has led to mothers leaving the workforce because of the enormous financial strain on family finances caused by the high cost of childcare which can often be as high as a mortgage.

The Government's response to childcare providers was the introduction of a grant scheme for early learning and child care services. In my own constituency and around other areas of Dublin, childcare providers have been forced to leave the scheme and to pass on the extra costs in doing so to the parents. The reason that childcare providers have had to leave the scheme is because the Government has failed to offset inflationary costs in overheads and in employment.

Childcare providers in my constituency have also criticised the Government for failing to properly invest in the early years sector in comparison with other EU countries. Sinn Féin will reverse this failure to provide proper investment for childcare services. We have looked at existing models of childcare provision in other countries which have proved to be both successful and affordable. Sinn Féin has a plan to deliver €10-a-day childcare. Low-cost childcare services are already being implemented in other countries. Proper childcare services are essential for job security and helping parents to enter the workforce. Sinn Féin’s childcare plan will give parents peace of mind and ease the financial burden of childcare costs on them.

Patricia Ryan (Kildare South, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Deputies Kerrane and Funchion for bringing this motion forward. Irish parents now pay some of the highest childcare fees in the OECD. Some pay the equivalent of a second mortgage, at nearly €1,400 per month, with my own constituency of South Kildare ranking among the most expensive counties for crèches in Ireland. This is an intolerable strain on parents who are already struggling with high mortgages, rents and the cost-of-living increases. Government failures to properly engage with parents and providers mean issues with childcare providers, rising costs and affordability were left behind. Increased investments and subsidies are a waste when they miss the target, leaving hard-pressed parents paying the price.

Sinn Féin has done its homework on this and it shows. I refer to affordability at €10 per day per child in crèches and childcare, increasing capacity by extending the €10-a-day cap to registered childminders and making childcare a viable career choice through increasing the hourly wage by €1.50 initially, with a further pay increase over a five-year period. It is time to follow European counterparts like Denmark and Sweden and fully recognise the importance of affordable and accessible childcare for parents. Sinn Féin has always been fully committed to a publicly funded childcare model. The time for that is now and Sinn Féin in government would bring this plan to fruition in 2025. Our children deserve nothing less.

Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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I welcome the opportunity to discuss early years education in the Chamber this evening. Unfortunately, for those of us who are serious about a publicly provided system of early years education, this motion does not meet the vision of that goal. This motion from Sinn Féin, and the confusing and contrary contributions we have heard so far, do not speak to where the early years education debate is in this country at the moment. The debate is within households, such as my own, who are in the midst of early years education, including the payment and finding of it and everything else, and it is about a publicly provided childcare system.

We were told the motion is new. The €10 per day childcare per child is not new. The Labour Party has been calling for a €200 per month cap, and 20 days multiplied by €10 is €200. We have been calling for that for years. That is not new. As to it being visionary, while extending parents’ leave and benefit schemes is important, that can be included among many different motions in many different areas.

Increasing the pay for early years educators is vitally important. We have a system in place now to do that, in fairness to the Minister, with the joint labour committee system. The Minister is not getting away because there are problems to which I will come.

We are in the last knockings of this Dáil. We need to be talking about where early years education needs to be going. On this side of the Chamber, we have heard about publicly funded childcare. There is a difference between publicly funded and publicly provided childcare. There is a split in the Government on this. The Minister has spoken about publicly provided childcare and early years education, which is where we need to go. Listening to Deputy Alan Farrell on "Drivetime" debating with Deputy Kerrane a few days ago, he was talking about publicly funded early years education. Publicly funded can mean the sustaining of the existing private model with public funds. That is what this motion, in essence, is calling for. It is not explicitly calling for a publicly provided early years education model.

It is not just parties like the Labour Party that are calling for this. Tomorrow, the National Women’s Council of Ireland, along with 30 alliance organisations, will be outlining and detailing a truly visionary plan for early years education. It is amazing that plan is not included in the motion.

We need a not-for-profit public system in which all investment directly benefits children, education and care, a system that starts whenever parents need it and includes high quality school-age childcare that is accessible and available to all children, including children with additional needs, children living in rural areas and children living in disadvantaged areas, and ensures decent pay and working conditions for our early years educators. Our early years educators need to be considered, paid and treated like our primary and secondary school teachers and educators in every other part of our publicly provided system. We need a system that combines public childcare provision with better pay and longer family leave, giving parents real choice in caring for their children and work-life balance.

The Labour Party supports the roll-out of a universal public model of early years education, to be developed initially through the education and training boards which will provide community early years services with a guaranteed place for every single child. We can also introduce an early years in situ scheme for the State to take over providers that are exiting the market – and it is a market at the moment because it is provided, in the main, by private operators. We know operators are saying they are leaving the market. We submitted parliamentary questions in this regard. While there are providers leaving the market, it is maybe not to the level ISME and others would have us believe. For any provider that leaves the market, the State should be in a position to purchase it to keep the workers on, allow them to become State employees and begin to move towards a properly publicly provided childcare and early years model.

I want the Minister to look at the example of Donabate in Fingal, north County Dublin and. Fingal is a local authority area on which the Minister and I both sat at more or less at the same time. It has the lowest level of community early years provision in the country. Some 6% of crèches in Fingal are community or not-for-profit compared with the 26% country-wide average. As the Minister knows, Fingal is the youngest local authority area in the State. That is wrong. If people go into an area like Donabate, where the Minister for housing, Deputy O'Brien, has staked his reputation on providing housing, they will see houses being built in the small village, which is becoming a large village in north County Dublin, but they will not see the provision of early years education or facilities in any way, shape or form. If people go to any door in any estate that is relatively new or has been built in recent years, this issue will come up. Person after person will say they do not have a crèche place.

This issue happened before and it is happening again right now. The Government has run out of time to deal with it because we are going to have an election soon. We need to make sure that in Donabate and other areas where houses are being built, as few as they are, we are providing early childcare facilities. In a local authority like Fingal, where the provision of publicly funded community, not-for-profit early years facilities is so low, we have a great opportunity to run a proper model and get in quickly. There are publicly owned sites and land banks there. There are developers on site that can build, on behalf of the State, the crèches and childcare facilities that need to be provided. If this does not happen, Donabate will become another example of what we had in the late 1990s and early 2000s, that is, house building without the services, crèches, schools and trains. We can go down the list but we are talking about early years childcare provision tonight. I am asking the Minister to look at this issue because this is a serious crisis and one that is, unfortunately, repeating itself.

The Minister had a good rattle with his amendment to this motion. As the Minister knows, I am not happy with the motion, but the record of the Minister and the Government on this will be mixed. He has said he has turned the dial. That will only be proved if, from this moment, we actually see the next Government move towards a publicly provided early years education model and we move away from subsidising mass private providers. We are going to continue with everyone being unhappy, with workers and parents paying too much, a lack of places, children being left at home and parents - the majority of whom are mothers as it is heavily gendered - not being able to go back to work.

We would then have providers exiting the system. A publicly provided service is the way forward. Unfortunately, the Government has not done that yet. The next Government will have to. This motion put forward by Sinn Féin certainly does not call for that either. Unfortunately, it is just a few extras to the system that currently exists. I will leave it at that.

Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats)
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I thank Sinn Féin for bringing this motion forward. It is always important to be able to discuss childcare provision and early education in this Chamber. Interestingly, in the past half hour I had a conversation with a young parent. He told me about his personal experience of getting childcare. He spoke about the stress of trying to find places and pay for them, the stress of getting children there and making sure they have aftercare. It brought me right back to that sick feeling that just sits in your stomach when you know you have to organise this for you own family and, if you do not, the repercussions of it. It may mean you cannot work or that you have to consider whether you can afford to go back to work, if that is your choice. It is a sad state of affairs that we are probably having the same conversations now that we would have been having ten years or 15 year ago. I acknowledge that the Government has invested a lot more than previous governments in the area of early education, but I do not think it has worked to the extent it should have, considering the amount of public money that has gone into it. Not a week goes by without a parent in my constituency talking to me about this. Recently, one woman, even though she had signed up for and paid for a crèche for her child a year in advance, when she went to take up that place in August, was told it would not be available until August of next year. She is a teacher, so she could not go back to her teaching job. The impacts of this can be seen throughout society. If we do not get this right for parents, children and childcare workers, we do not get it right for society in total.

The reason the investment and the focus put on it by the Minister has not worked to date is because the model is completely wrong. We are expecting a private system to provide a public good. Ultimately, in a private system, the responsibility of companies is to their shareholders and to make money. They do not align with the needs of our children or their families. While this motion is welcome, I too was surprised and disappointed to see no mention or reflection of the public provision in it, with the State providing that fundamental service. I recognise there is an immediate need to reduce costs for parents. This debate is indicative of the same discussion we have been having for decades. It is really one centred about how we can subsidise private providers with State money. We in the Social Democrats firmly believe that while measures such as these should be taken to alleviate the immediate need and costs to parents, childcare should be a publicly provided State service in the same vein as education. We need a public childcare model in State ownership that offers families accessible and affordable childcare and that ensures the best possible care and early education for our children. It needs to be a model that gives staff security and dignity in their wages and it should be a system that is not subject to annual changes in funding levels and price increases. A public childcare alternative is the long-term solution. It is not even the long-term solution; we need to start introducing this now. We need to start setting a pathway to this now. I welcome the fact the Minister is now saying this is Green Party policy. I wish he had started even part of that five years ago rather than funding the private sector to deliver the service. We would now be five years more down the road with it. This is the solution we need to pursue as a State. It is the only solution that will ensure future generations do not have the same worries we had or have as parents.

The measures that have been taken have not made as much of a difference as they should have. Interestingly, there was research conducted. In the system we have at the moment, the smaller providers are struggling because they are not big enough. They are not the big corporates. They are finding it difficult to keep their heads above water in the current system. Then we have the large corporates, and they are making a huge amount of money off the backs of parents and the public, because public money subsidises the system. Research conducted by Michael Taaffe in 2023 went through the profits for these biggest corporate providers. Despite the pay increases for early years educators and despite the efforts the Government made to deal with that, the staff are still on €13.65 per hour. We can see it is not actually working.

The other thing we have not seen, which was reflected in the Minister's speech, is the choice families need being provided to them. There is no flexibility when it comes to childcare. There is not really the ability for parents to choose a childcare provider that suits their family and child. Each child, at different stages of their life, will need a different support and childcare model, and certainly that choice is not there for them. Unfortunately, this is because the subsidies that have been provided benefit the larger providers more. These providers look at pure profits. It is very hard to get a baby into a crèche because they are the most expensive to care for. The big providers are not looking after those different cohorts of children. This puts huge pressures on families.

I want to raise an issue about small providers I have seen in Wicklow, and it is about the bureaucratic nature of the system that is in place and the lack of transparency for them. One provider is in Wicklow town and the other is in Blessington. Both of them applied to the Department for the fee increase but they have not been told yet that they have received it. As a result, parents do not know if their fees are going to go up. The providers have told the parents they have applied for this increase. The providers do not know what is going to happen and, unfortunately, the Wicklow childcare committee does not seem to know either. One thing that could be done immediately is to get the channels of communication worked on so that providers know where they stand. If providers do not know where they stand, parents will not know where they stand, and that brings enormous stress.

If we continue to use sticking plasters in the form of public money to keep a private system as the model, we will continue to fail. The only way we will get this right is to have a fully public model of childcare that parents can avail of. Then the State can control the service and the money. The workers themselves would be happier because they would have job security as well. Unfortunately, this motion does not address that and I see it as a very large gap. We are coming up to an election and I hope that each of the parties will put a public model into their election manifestoes. It is time that parents in Ireland had the same service as parents all over Europe have. There is no reason they deserve less.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Deputy Mick Barry is sharing time with Deputy Paul Murphy.

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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I will start with a quote from a parent who put it extremely well:

Early years childcare in Ireland seems broken. The staff themselves are poorly paid and move frequently. Parents have to pay exorbitant fees, which become even more challenging to fund if there is more than one child. The Government needs to look at a more wholescale change to the system. There are environmental and social impacts to families being forced to travel long distances to find crèche places. There are also gender-based inequalities, as women are often forced to reduce hours or take leave from work in order to make childcare affordable. This has a significant impact on long-term earning potential.

They summed it up: The current model of childcare is utterly broken and is failing almost everybody involved. It is failing the workers who are poorly paid with very high rates of turnover. It is failing the families who pray they will find a place for their child. Sometimes they cannot find a place until they are two or older and are then faced with paying the equivalent of another mortgage or even two. At the moment it is failing them because of the privatised model. I know that multiple crèches in my constituency, and I presume it is a significant number across the country, are telling parents that they will opt out of the core funding and will hike fees by 35%, 40% or 50% - by an extraordinary amount – and they have the parents over a barrel. They are effectively able to hold their children to ransom and parents have no choice. It is failing many of the small operators who are really struggling with all the things they have to do to access core funding, the pressure from the bigger operators and so on. The only ones it is working for are the big chains which are making enormous profits. Figures came out about that recently.

Unfortunately what we have before us, in what the Government is doing and plans to do and in terms of Sinn Féin’s motion, is an attempt to build on this completely failed model. We support the Sinn Féin motion. Obviously we welcome people’s childcare costs coming down but it just involves throwing more money at this privatised model and not getting to the root of the problem. It is very well for the Minister to try to criticise the Sinn Féin motion from the left and say we need to have public childcare but the Minister is responsible for the current model. There is no indication of a public childcare model. The whole system is built around public money for a privatised model.

That is the fundamental problem. That is what needs to be addressed. The best way to deal with this is to establish a publicly owned and operated national childcare service. We launched our policy on this last year. It outlines it very clearly. It should be operated completely free of charge, just like primary school and secondary education are operated. There is no reason preschool should be different. It should be available to all children equally regardless of where they live, whether they have additional needs or how rich or poor their parents are. That is how we cherish all the children of the nation equally. This is why we support the launch tomorrow of the alliance for a public system of early childhood education and care. It is crucial that childcare is provided as a publicly owned and operated service and not outsourced to private providers as it has been until now. It is about respecting childcare workers as the essential public servants they are with wages and conditions on a par with teachers and ensuring that therefore every child gets quality childcare.

The century of appalling abuse perpetrated in primary and secondary schools by the Catholic Church shows the danger of the State outsourcing its responsibility for educating our children. It is not that long since the State started outsourcing early childhood care and education to the private sector but already we have a lengthening litany of abuse. Earlier this year, the High Court approved awards of €615,000 to 40 very young children who were mistreated by the Hyde and Seek crèche chain. The crèches were understaffed leading to neglect. Children were left in dirty nappies and left to go hungry, apparently so that the owners could cut costs and make higher profits. Three quarters of childcare services in this country are run for profit at the moment. Earlier this week, we heard reports of physical and verbal abuse of two and three year olds at a charity-run crèche in south Dublin. Children’s heads were slapped, their legs hit, a child with sensory issues was force fed until they vomited and tiny little kids were called abusive names. It would really make your heart break.

Of course, it should go without saying that the vast majority of childcare services are not abusive. Every day tens of thousands of parents trust them to mind their children and to make sure that they are well looked after. People can see for themselves the care that the childcare workers have for their children but far too often, going above and beyond is what childcare workers are forced to do because of inadequate resources and inadequate Government support. A survey carried out by SIPTU earlier this year found that 68% of workers felt pressure due to staff shortages. That was a big issue. Some 65% cited stress and burnout and staff turnover is running at 25%. The major reason for all this is very low pay for childcare workers. Pay is as low as €13.65 an hour so it is not surprising that 86% identified low pay as the biggest work issue and 95% said they were only able to make ends meet with difficulty or great difficulty. Why are the wages so low? According to a report by TASC in 2020, the single most important factor in lowering the pay and conditions of care work is the extent to which it is marketised. In other words, the reason the pay is so low is so that crèche workers can make higher profits. The lower the wages, the higher the profits.

There does seem to be a rip-off of parents. We have received numerous complaints in my constituency about sudden and very large increases. One crèche, Rathfarnham Daycare informed parents that it is leaving the core funding scheme and increasing its fees by between €300 and €350 per month per child. It said it did not have the money and that is why it needed to do so. When parents looked at its accounts, they found that €1.6 million had been paid to directors in 2022 and that over €200,000 had been declared in profit in 2023. Yet the Minister answers to say that they are still in the core funding scheme. It is another example of why we need a proper public national childcare service.

Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity)
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I want to make a few points about daycare in my constituency of Cork North Central. Northside Community Enterprises are currently waiting on a green light from the Department for funding of approximately €300,000 to renovate the old Before 5 family centre in Churchfield. This early learning childcare and community centre was closed suddenly in August 2023 with more than 100 children enrolled for the year ahead. Its loss has been an open wound on the north side of Cork city. This centre will not reopen for the current school year but it absolutely must be ready for August-September 2025. There could be up to four months worth of renovation work to be done there. I am appealing to the Minister to ensure that the funding application is processed quickly and approved.

The New Horizons preschool at the St. Vincent’s campus on St. Mary’s Road closed suddenly at the end of this August. There were 38 children enrolled who lost their places. There ensued a mad scramble for places. Some found a place, others did not. The closure of New Horizons further underlines the crucial importance of funding the renovations in Churchfield. It is not acceptable that parents, children and staff have to undergo the trauma of these closures every August and September. There needs to be a guarantee of service of pre-schools and childcare centres across the State.

The only way this can be done is by the State taking direct responsibility for early learning and childcare. Primary schools do not close down at the start of the primary school year and nor should early learning or childcare. The Taoiseach is talking about more state intervention in childcare and making it more affordable but the current for-profit model of childcare is broken and throwing more money at it will not fix it. In Ballincollig, which is about to come into the Cork North Central constituency, a service provider recently reported 400 families on its application lists. We need a more radical and fundamental change than the Sinn Féin motion is offering or the Goverment is offering. We need full State provision of childcare across the State funded by progressive taxation on the rich and childcare that is free for all children at the point of use.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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I thank Deputy Barry. We go to the Regional Group and Deputy Verona Murphy is sharing time with Deputy Tóibín.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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I will take the first five minutes if that is all right.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Whatever you like.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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I appreciate that. The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, mentioned his vision for public delivery for childcare. It is a pity that he has not been in government for the past year to have an opportunity to put that vision in place. It is an incredible situation that we are having speeches at the end of this Government's term that should have been made at the start and the subject matter of which should have been implemented. The Minister and this Government have had a significant destabilising effect on the provision of childcare. The Minister spoke about the numbers of new services that are opening in the system and the numbers that are closing. If we look at the lists he is quoting, however, we can see that services which have been closed for three years are still on them. The Minister is not working off up-to-date information as to the services that exist within the system.

I do not ask the Minister to believe me on this; I ask him to speak to the providers that have closed over the past number of years. Dozens of providers that have closed their doors. I ask the Minister to speak to the families who are pulling their hair out trying to get access to childcare and early years education in their localities. They cannot get access to either. Facilities are becoming as rare as hen's teeth. Parents are registering their children with providers as soon as they are born. While the Minister makes a song and dance about the reduction of the level of costs to parents for childcare and the increased investment in it, in reality, there has been a significant destabilisation of the sector because it is simply just not viable for more and more people. That lack of viability is affecting the smaller providers and the providers that are operating in rural Ireland the most. There are now many decent-sized towns where people may have only one or two options available when it comes to childcare.

It is interesting how the Government treats the issue of care. Whether it is childcare, nursing home care or children in State care, what this Government has done is create a system where the staff who work in those areas get some of the lowest wages on offer in the country. We thrust our most important people into this sector and yet the Government pays really low wages to the individuals who work in it. The Government basically devalues the contribution these people make by refusing to pay them proper wages. As a result, there is a high turnover of staff.

Nursing homes are in a similar situation. Many cannot operate in a viable fashion and are closing. The Minister is obviously in charge of children in State care. We know that Tusla, under his authority, is putting children into special emergency accommodation units that are not regulated by the State and that allow for children to go missing. Some of those children are exploited by gangs for sexual exploitation. This is an incredible situation. The whole carer system in this country is an absolute mess.

It is amazing that we have debates of this nature on childcare and that so often the discussion becomes around an ideological flag. I would love to see the proper delivery of public childcare within the State, but the reality is that we are a million miles away from a system that will be able to do that. We are trying to buttress the system that is in place in order that there will at least be some opportunity for parents to get access to childcare. If we want to make sure we have an option for families, the Minister needs to sit down with the providers. I commend the providers and the thousands of those workers who have gone on strike on a number of times outside the Dáil over the past years. The last time they went on strike, the Minister said there was no need for them to do so. I was looking at the balance sheets of some of their businesses and at how in trouble they were and comparing them with a ministerial salary. Listening to a Minister say there was no reason to go on strike was quite incredible.

The first thing we need to do is to invest in those providers to make sure they are viable. We need to invest in the wages to make sure people can get a decent livelihood out of providing care in this State. We also need to ensure that parents have access to affordable childcare in their home towns in order that the providers can live and provide for their own families as well.

Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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The motion was brought forward in good faith but I do not think it will solve our problem. I do not doubt the Minister's bone fides in what he is trying to do but, unfortunately, it is ineffective. We have a cross-section of private and public childcare. Some 74% of our childcare is catered for in the private sector and 26% is in the public sector. They are not a million miles apart in the cost base but funding is the real issue. It is often too little too late. The problem we have is that we end up with the cost base eroding the Government input, and far in excess of it. If we look at the information the childcare federation has provided, it depicts matters quite well. It uses a stool to illustrate the position, and the providers are the third leg. What the federation is saying is that the input has been increased by 15% but the costs have gone up by 28%. That 13% deficit is being met by private providers. Essentially, the net increase of €75 million only covers 44% of the ERO increases that have been set down by the Minister.

Where this is going to fall is in the context of our nursing home sector. Some 80% of patients in nursing homes are catered for in private nursing homes, yet the 20% who are catered for by the HSE probably cost an extra €400 per bed. We see nursing home closures day on day. We see them being taken over by much larger conglomerate nursing homes coming in from outside the country because they are able to compete in that they are buying en masse and so forth. That is not going to happen in the childcare sector. We have a level of corporate crèches in urban areas that we do not have in rural areas. In my area, we primarily depend on the family resource centres. In my local family resource centre in Ramsgrange, they are wonderful people. All people in childcare have a vocation because at €15 an hour they could probably get more working for our conglomerate supermarkets. The problem with that is that we have two-income families who greatly depend on childcare regardless of whether it is private or public. They are trying to find childcare where they can.

We have a mass exodus from the scheme in order to prevent closures. I see the Minister is shaking his head. I did say I did not doubt his bone fides in this matter. The reality is the reality, however. This is happening across Government sectors. We cannot build houses without builders and we cannot keep throwing money at the problem because clearly they do not know what the problem is in housing. It would appear that the cart is very much before the horse in the area of childcare. We cannot do this and transition without having a just transition from private into public and without decimating the sector first. That just should not happen. It is happening in the healthcare sector, where we have a fair deal scheme that is no longer fit for purpose. That scheme does not support nursing homes' costs. We are probably going to see a reduced level of care and then we will have tribunals, inquiries and reports just as we seeing as described by my colleague earlier in the context of lawsuits.

I asked the Minister last year to please not go down this road in order that we would not end up in that position. Unfortunately, we are going down that road. I have people who cannot get childcare at any cost. In the public sector, we do not have anybody going into it because they are not able to earn enough to meet their costs of living and they are taking jobs in supermarkets. Our family resource centre in Ramsgrange cannot open a section for children under the age of three because it cannot get the requisite staff to operate under the regulation. We are causing these problems. As much money as the Minister is putting in, it may be too little too late. We need to look at the model because he is doing more harm than good. As I said, I do not doubt his bone fides. Unfortunately, I believe the model we are instituting is not effective.

Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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I will support this motion because it is very important. We need childcare professionals and we need mothers and women in the workforce. They need to work to keep their homes, so we need to help those people, along with childcare professionals. The motion calls for extending parent's leave and benefit schemes to ensure parents have the choice to remain with their baby in the first year of its life. No one can compensate for a mother in the home minding her children and bonding with them for a year or more, and if we can support women to stay in the home longer with their children, perhaps we should look at something like that.

I have been around long enough to remember when children helped their grandparents and the grandparents helped the children. The grandparents kept the children from slipping into a barrel of water or falling into the fire, and the children brought in the turf and maybe a cup of tea and helped the grandparents, perhaps allowing them to stay in their homes longer. We have seen too many cases of grandparents being moved into nursing homes. They say it is like being in a departure lounge. It is sad when you hear them say something like that.

Yes, life has moved on and women and mothers are working, as they have to do, which I appreciate and understand, but there are difficulties. Even healthcare professionals will tell you they are not paid properly. There are problems during the summer holidays when children are at home and are not in the crèche or pre-school. These mothers find it difficult during the holiday time to survive, and that is not good enough. The workers should be paid all year round and creche owners should also be better supported financially with better conditions. They do a great job and they are professionals, as they have to be. They are vetted and everything has to be right. We appreciate what they are doing but we need to support them more.

I will definitely support the motion and I look forward to matters being improved. One of the issues we are met with at the doors all the time is childcare and the funding of it. Families are in financial trouble trying to pay for all the demands they meet in running their home, minding their children and looking after them.

Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent)
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I fully support Sinn Féin's motion. Childcare is essential for society, aiding children's development and enabling parents to work. Ireland faces a childcare crisis, however, with high costs, limited availability and inadequate support for professionals. This crisis demands urgent reform. Affordable, accessible and reliable childcare is crucial for families and the economy. It allows parents to work, boosts economic growth and ensures children receive the care they need. Despite its importance, childcare in Ireland lacks sufficient investment. Childcare costs are extremely high, comparable to a second mortgage for many parents. Thousands of children are on waiting lists, highlighting a system in crisis. Countries such as Sweden and Denmark cap childcare costs, making it affordable.

Ireland should adopt similar measures to ease the financial burden on families and increase workforce participation, especially among women. The Government must act immediately. I support increasing the national childcare scheme subsidy to provide for childcare at a cost of €10 per day per child, reducing the financial strain and improving accessibility. Early years educators should receive an initial pay increase of €1.50 an hour, with annual rises to help retain professionals and ensure high-quality care for children. Additionally, the Government should increase childcare capacity by speeding up the process for childminders to offer subsidies, using vacant buildings for childcare, as seen in the UK, and extending parent's leave and benefit schemes to allow parents to stay with their babies during the first year, which is crucial for well-being.

Investing in quality childcare benefits children, families and society. It supports child development, alleviates financial stress and fosters economic growth and social stability. Having recently met some of the west Cork representatives from the early years union, I know they believe that if a child’s early years are to be valued and recognised, the Government and employers must ensure that wages in the early years sector are increased above the living wage. The living wage rate is evidence based. Earning below it suggests employees are forced to go without certain essentials in order that they can survive.

It is shocking how employees in early years childcare, whether in the private or public sector, are treated. I spoke to one lady who told me she has to sign on. These people are the very same as teachers. The only difference is that they teach children in their early years. When teachers of older children finish their work for the year in June, they do not have to sign on for social welfare. The situation these people are left with is astonishing. The lady, one of the group I met, told me she and her husband had applied for a mortgage but could not get one because she had been signing on for social welfare, given she works in early years childcare, during the summer months, which she does not want to have to do. Luckily, the husband was able to get a mortgage, but his is now the only name on the mortgage and she is unable to get her name onto it because she works in early years childcare and has to sign on. If we are to take the world seriously, we have to look at that model such that these people who are working will be treated the same as teachers, with the respect they deserve, because they teach our children at the early stages of their life, which will be of benefit to the country as time goes on.

I do not think the Minister is listening, perhaps not specifically tonight but in general, to this crisis that has brought people who work in early years childcare to the Dáil, protesting and so on. They do not want to protest. They want to go back to their local communities and work with the people there but the Minister is not listening and does not want to do so. Personally, I do not think he has even listened to us tonight. This debate is just a box-ticking exercise, in my view, and I am not one bit pleased with his attitude.

Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent)
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As a father and grandparent, I know that early years learning and childcare is a necessity, but in my experience and that of families around me, getting childcare is next to impossible. That is why I will support the motion. Currently, two people in a household have to work in order to survive, and then they have to try to get childcare for their children, which is a massive cost. People are now thinking they might be better off at home, not working, and they might then be able to take care of their children. This is because, when they leave the financial side out of it, they go to work and work hard, come home, collect their children and when they look at their wage packet at the end of the week, most of it goes towards the cost of childcare. It has to be subsidised to make sure that a person who is working and contributing to the State to help other people will get a contribution towards the cost of childcare.

Earlier, we had a meeting in the audiovisual room with representatives of the early years sector. The Minister had sent his apologies and said he could not make it, which was a pity because it took only an hour or an hour and a half. I understand he made it to Croom recently, where he met people, including my mother-in-law.

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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Yes, I got a selfie with your mother-in-law.

Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent)
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Yes. I am sorry I could not make it to meet the Minister because I was meeting constituents, but I had not been notified of his visit, and whenever I am notified of a visit from any Minister, I make it my business to attend. Whenever a Minister comes to the area, I show him or her ample respect. I was not notified in advance, however, and I have my own schedule for meeting the people of Limerick, which I have to try to keep to. Having said that, out of respect, I would have turned up if I had known.

Early years childcare needs to be supported, which means the people in this country need to get funding. I believe that the Minister is considering a model for a national childcare service. I would love to know where he is going to get the people to do it. I hope it will not be the same builder who built the bike shed who is make the reforms to allow that to be done. Imagine if we had €336,000 to spend on early years childcare in an area.

It might be a drop in the ocean but it might actually help somebody to get childcare in their area and support other jobs within childcare. Anyone who is in childcare or youth organisations that are looking after children throughout the year, allowing other people to go to work, should also be funded through the times parents are off work and the children are not being minded. That is something we should look into.

Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change)
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I am sharing time with my three colleagues. I am supporting the Private Members' motion from Sinn Féin on this childcare payment, as I would support any Private Members' motion calling for more money to be put into people's pockets. Childcare is one of the biggest costs to working families and it is a growing cost that is pricing parents, particularly women, out of employment. It is like a second mortgage or rent for people. Like mortgages and rent, under this Government it keeps going up. This is against a backdrop of rising in-work poverty rates, rising child deprivation rates, rising single parent at risk of poverty rates, and rising child homelessness. Families cannot afford to keep going on like this and childcare is one of the big areas where we can really take the pressure off struggling families. The Minister announced two days ago that there would be an increase in childcare funding in this budget. I welcome that. The problem is that this is just another programme where the Government attempts to provide public services with public money through private providers and it is just not working. We are seeing the same things play out across all these programmes, in childcare, nursing homes and homeless accommodation. We have funding streams that usually are not enough to ensure that these private providers can stay in business without price hikes or cutbacks. They then struggle to provide an adequate quality of service or decent pay and conditions for their workers. The increases in Government funding for childcare we saw last year have largely been eaten up by price increases. In many cases, price increases are the exact same amount as the funding increases. Parents and families have seen none of the benefits, and all for the purpose of the Government's aversion to publicly providing services we all need.

We need a universal public childcare system, directly funded and run by the State. It is the only way to guarantee that funding and costs match. We would create a good system for families, children and childcare workers and it would allow us to have a free-at-point-of-access childcare system that does not put more and more pressure on families. Belgium, Denmark, Lithuania, Norway and Slovenia provide free childcare for under threes. These are comparable countries except that, unlike us, they do not have the luxury of multi-billion euro budget surpluses. There is no reason we cannot provide free childcare through a fully funded public system that provides a decent place to work for staff and offers children and families a safe, free and high-quality service.

I listened to the briefing from the Federation of Early Childhood Providers today, which covers more than 40% of early years services nationwide. I believe its precarious situation should be listened to and its proposals accepted by the Minister when they meet next week, pending the implementation of a publicly-funded childcare system where they can be incorporated over a period of time through pilot schemes or whatever. That is what is needed. They need to be kept in place until that happens.

Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent)
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I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward the motion. The only addition I would make to it is to emphasise the need to ensure that parents can access childcare. Just today the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation was in Buswells. One of the issues it raised with me was childcare. While costs are less than previously, its members have huge difficulty in accessing childcare. One of the reasons for this is that some of the smaller services, in particular those which entered core funding and had to freeze their fees, are now closing because their businesses are not viable. The Minister tells us that more services are open now than previously. Seven services closed in Sligo this September. One in my home village of Ballintogher moved to community, but six mainly smaller rural services have closed. They are either in rural areas or on the outskirts of towns, run by local women for local communities. In the last year, one multinational corporation opened a service in Sligo. We are five down with no geographical spread. I have met many of the owners of these services that have closed. They are devastated. They had to freeze their fees at 2017 or 2020 levels in order to access core funding, yet the new service in Sligo run by a chain can access core funding and charge higher fees. It is just so unfair. It is a business model the Minister has forced on providers. His Department is refusing to accept their accounts, which satisfy Revenue. What is good enough for Revenue is not good enough for the Department. It insists on a different timeframe from Revenue. Is it any wonder childcare providers are tearing their hair out?

Deputy Collins said the Minister is due to meet the Federation of Early Childhood Providers. I hope he is and, if he is not, I ask him to do so to try to stabilise the sector.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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I thank Sinn Féin for the motion. Although I have concerns about it, I appreciate that the tenor of it is to reduce the cost for parents and I fully support that. What is missing is a commitment to the provision of public childcare and the operation of childcare. I know the Minister has done his best to reduce the cost and has brought in schemes, but he has ignored what the citizens' assembly asked for more than four years ago. It told us that 98% of childcare staff are female, the hourly wage of childcare staff is 43.5% below average, almost 80% of childcare workers do not have sick pay and so on. Four years ago, it recommended to move, over the next decade, to a publicly-funded, accessible and regulated model. No progress has been made. The National Women's Council called for this before the last election and for the budget, asking to bring in publicly-funded childcare, publicly operated for the benefit of all. In a July 2023 survey conducted by Excel Recruitment, we are told that almost 60% of couples with children said that one partner had given up work due to the cost of childcare and in the majority of cases it was the woman. I have one minute left. In every election since 2011 it has been about housing, health and childcare. Parents have literally been pulling their hair out at the door, saying they are paying the equivalent of a second mortgage. Every single election that is the theme. At some stage, sense has to prevail. We have a job to do as the Opposition to point out what we think is the best solution, notwithstanding the good attempts the Minister has made. It is all patchwork quilt and again from Sinn Féin tonight, it is patchwork, without an overall vision and a time set to implement that vision for public childcare. Nothing in education should be based on profit. If we have learned anything from Covid and from the declaration of the climate emergency, it is transformative change. For the time I have left, I will keep using those two words. Transformative change has to mean something. We start with public childcare, publicly operated, publicly funded.

Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent)
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I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on this motion regarding childcare. I fully support the motion, particularly as it calls on the Government to make childcare more affordable for parents and to increase pay for early years educators. However, I do not believe the motion goes far enough. Really we should be aiming for public childcare that is completely State funded. Parents are not only expected to go out and work, they have to. We should be aiming to provide a system that allows a parent to stay at home with their children and raise them and for that to be valued in this society, rather than pushing people out to work. In this economy, two incomes are needed to make ends meet and most parents are forced to work in order to get by, leaving them with no choice but to put the children into childcare. They are then faced with a lack of available childcare, particularly if their child has any additional needs, and punished with extortionate childcare fees. Over the last few days I have been talking to many constituents of mine in Donegal about the childcare challenges they face. One constituent had to go to another county to access childcare while another described how there are no SNAs available for their child with additional needs in any of the new childcare facilities. They described how they and their partner have to work full-time to pay bills and live, and said it is a constant battle with services and the lack of them, and never-ending worry. The term most often used by constituents to describe paying for childcare is a second mortgage. That is how expensive childcare has become. People feel they are paying the equivalent of a second mortgage at a time when the housing crisis has seen housing prices and therefore mortgage repayments skyrocket, as well as rent. It is an absolute disgrace and people rightly feel that they are being hit from every angle.

Another constituent described how they are paying €450 a week for childcare in Donegal for two kids. They said they felt they needed to remain working, even though it was at a loss somewhat, because they would be deskilled if they had taken time away from it. I am not sure how everyone does it. So many sacrifices are made.

It is shocking to hear people's stories and, unfortunately, the Minister is happy to let parents blame childcare providers whose hands are tied in many instances because the increase in the subsidies has been written off by the increase in cost of childcare. I spoke to one manager who described having no choice but to increase prices due to cost, just one of which was €5,000 a month for food for the service they provide. We need to accept that the real issue lies with the Department and there is a real need for Ireland to introduce public childcare for everyone at a fair cost.

Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Independent)
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In my limited time I will only get the opportunity to raise two substantive points, one being the major gap for those children who are not yet two years and nine months but who have additional needs and whom the Minister has locked out of vital supports, ECCE and AIM. I am aware the Minister knows of a particular case in Clare which has been brought to his office. He has not taken action and, importantly, has not yet responded. I ask him to prioritise this case immediately.

On Friday, I will visit the Kidz Haven crèche in Shannon to see at first hand how a child with cerebral palsy is coping under such circumstances. I invite the Minister to join us. This child is in need of a specialised walker and a specialised chair, among other specialised equipment. This means the parents are dropping that equipment that is used at home daily. Why does the Department not recognise that a disability can exist before children turn two years and nine months? There should be no age requirement for children with needs and this must be addressed. The Department should create a special case dispensation or something similar to address this matter. The good-hearted provider has actually employed the SNA and is footing the bill themselves.

Next is the reality of the closures. If more providers are opening and fewer are closing, does that not directly imply that capacity should be increasing? However, that is not the case. I know of people in emergency accommodation who are on an 18-month waiting list for childcare in Ennis. The Minister's numbers are not reflective of reality. I brought this matter to him last year. The three strands of the sector, the parents, the providers and the staff, have been in despair. The reality is the Minister did not invest enough, did not listen enough and did not do enough of what those who knew best suggested. Instead, like many other areas he has responsibility for, he digs his heels in, ignores, deflects and, in fact, demonises. That is not the kind of politics that brings any benefits to society. I have taken real issue with how the Minister does business. There have been at least 475 closures between 2017 and June of this year. The fact is those providers that close are actually left on the register for an additional six months, and that is only if they have submitted their change of circumstance form. However, by the time they have made the decision to close, which is not a decision taken lightly, that step is easily missed.

Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome this motion as an opportunity to debate the important issue of early learning and childcare. It is clear from the debate so far that we all recognise the importance of early learning and childcare for children and their families as well as for society and the wider economy.

In opposing the Deputies' motion and putting forward a countermotion, the Government’s objective is not to claim there are no challenges in the sector but rather to demonstrate that the Government has set out a pathway to address affordability, accessibility, quality and availability and has made significant progress in this regard.

The Minister, Deputy O’Gorman, in his opening speech focused on affordability, accessibility and quality. I will focus on availability and supporting children with additional needs in early years. Government acknowledges there is further work to do to support the type and volume of early learning and childcare services that will best match the needs of parents and children, but there is now in place a very solid foundation of funding and data from which to plan. All of our data point to an expanding sector. Data from the early years sector profile survey show us that, between 2021-22 and 2022-23, the estimated number of enrolments in services rose by 8%, from 197,210 to 213,154, and the estimated number of staff in the early learning and childcare workforce rose by 8%, from 34,357 to 37,060. Core funding application data show us that between year 1, from September 2022 to August 2023, and year 2, from September 2023 to August 2024, of the scheme, annual place hours increased by 7.4%.

Data from Tusla on service closures and new service registrations show a net increase of 129 in the overall number of services in 2023 and a five-year low in the number of net preschool service closures, with preschool service closures falling by 18% since the introduction of core funding. Data from the national childcare service show us that, since 2022, there has been a 22% increase in the number of providers offering the scheme, a 97% increase in the numbers of children benefiting from the scheme, and a 57% increase in the number of sponsored children. Notwithstanding this, Government acknowledges there is evidence that demand for places is increasing and, for certain cohorts and in certain areas, outstripping supply.

Regarding children with disabilities in the early years sector, AIM is a child-centred model involving both universal and targeted supports and designed to be responsive to the needs of each child in the context of their preschool setting. It empowers service providers to deliver an inclusive preschool experience, ensuring every eligible child can fully participate in the ECCE programme and reap the benefits of early learning and care. Since AIM was first launched in 2016, more than 27,000 children have received targeted AIM supports in more than 4,400 settings nationally and many more children have benefited from its universal supports. AIM has also been recognised nationally and globally and has won awards for excellence in practice and inclusion.

An independent evaluation of AIM, commissioned by this Department and undertaken by the University of Derby, was published in January 2024. It involved almost 2,000 stakeholders - parents, educators, providers and representative groups. The evaluation’s findings were overwhelmingly positive and there was unanimous stakeholder support to extend AIM beyond the ECCE programme. In line with these findings and in addition to the support AIM provides to the more than 7,000 children with a disability each year to access the ECCE programme, from this month there is the phased extension of targeted AIM supports to these children beyond time spent in the ECCE programme, in term and out of term. In addition to this, an action plan has been developed to respond to areas for improvement, including increasing awareness of AIM, further building the capacity and confidence of educators and providers in supporting children with autism and streamlining the application process for equipment, appliances and minor alterations.

Equal Start is the new funding model and set of universal and targeted measures to support access to, and participation in, early learning and childcare for children and their families who experience disadvantage. The roll-out of Equal Start began this month, with more than 750 services designated as priority settings anticipated to receive targeted supports in the first year.

Government is progressing a range of actions to ensure the supply of early learning and childcare is aligned with demand, with work in this area led by a new supply management unit established earlier this year in the Department. This unit is actively progressing the development of a planning model. A metric for analysing different types of early learning and childcare has been developed, and the availability of these places is now being geo-mapped against the child population at each year of age, given the significantly different early learning and childcare requirements of children at different stages. As well as clarifying the status quo position regarding supply and demand at a local area level, this model will allow us to estimate future demand in line with population change.

That detailed, specific and area-focused analysis will also guide the development of a supply policy, which is also being developed by the supply management unit. As part of this policy development, the unit is examining whether some element of public provision should be introduced alongside private provision, as recommended by the expert group on the new funding model, Partnership for the Public Good.

The work already under way between the supply management unit in the Department and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage to review the 2001 planning guidelines will also be a critical input to the supply policy. An interdepartmental working group has been convened to examine the 2001 planning guidelines to determine their application and suitability in the context of current policy and legislative provisions and based on projected demand. As part of this review, the development and dissemination of a survey of planning authorities on the application of the 2001 planning guidelines will be undertaken. In addition, and in keeping with the long tradition of capital investment, 40% of all places have been funded by the State under the combination of capital investment under the equal opportunities childcare programme 2000-2006 and the national childcare investment programme 2006-2013.

These funded the creation of 65,000 places, while the Department’s annual capital programme since 2015 has seen the creation of more than 27,000 new places. This Government has allocated €89 million under the National Development Plan 2023-2026, with the overwhelming majority of this earmarked for supply under the Building Blocks capital programme. Under this programme, the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, recently announced a €25 million capital scheme to support existing services to expand their provision for those aged from one to three years through building large-scale extensions to existing premises and to support community services to purchase or construct new premises. I anticipate there will be significant interest in this scheme and look forward to thousands more early learning and childcare places being delivered in the coming years through the scheme.

Moreover, as Deputies will be aware, the Government recently approved the publication of the Child Care (Amendment) Act 2024 and childminding-specific regulations as committed to in the National Action Plan for Childminding 2021-2028 will be introduced at the end of this month. This will enable parents using childminders to access national childcare scheme subsidies. This is another major development to expand access to publicly subsidised early learning and childcare provision, as acknowledged in the motion put forward by Sinn Féin.

The procedures on the use of school property and school sports facilities outside school hours recently published by my colleague will support schools and other facilities to make their premises available for early learning and childcare, among other uses.

I do not wish to claim there are no challenges in the early learning and childcare sector but, rather, to demonstrate the Government has set out a pathway to address challenges and has made very significant progress in a short time in this regard. There is international recognition of this progress. The European Commission has recently endorsed the approach of the Government and welcomed the substantial progress that has been made. Notwithstanding this progress, there is recognition we need to continue to address affordability, accessibility, quality and availability. In this context, there remains an ambitious programme of work under way that will allow us to build on the very significant reforms to date.

Sitting through this entire debate, one would be forgetful to think nothing has happened in the last four years. In four years, childcare fees have reduced by 50%. Looking at the Sinn Féin policy, what is it going to do with the sponsorship programme? If the party is setting a price of €10 per day, where is it going to look after the most vulnerable?

Johnny Mythen (Wexford, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Claire Kerrane and Kathleen Funchion for developing our childcare policy. Childcare is an essential linchpin in the creation and sustaining of a good, healthy society. The benefits are enormous to any state or country. The added value is immeasurable and is a solid social investment in the future of our citizens. Childcare is the fundamental block to building and sustaining cohesion, a stable society and a strong economy. This is why Sinn Féin has tabled this motion.

The cost of childcare five days a week is running at an average of €800 per month and in some of our larger cities and towns it is well over €1,000, which is almost the equivalent of a second mortgage. We are proposing to increase the subsidy under the national childcare scheme to €10 a day per child and thereby reduce the €800 average cost to €200 per month. In tandem, we must pay a decent wage to early years educators, who are the most valuable people in the entire process, yet the lowest-paid in their profession. In the interim, we are in favour of a publicly funded model and bringing early years and school-age care graduates within public sector pay and conditions, in line with teachers. We propose initially for early educators an hourly increase of €1.50, which is badly needed to retain the workers in this area, followed by a commitment to further increases on an annual basis, subject to negotiations with the sector. We will cap the price of childcare, as that is good practice used in several other European countries.

Suddenly, in the Government amendment, the Minister had a road to Damascus moment and is going to introduce it fully next year. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have been in power for over 14 years now and during that time have managed to reach some of the highest childcare costs in Europe. In my constituency of Wexford, working parents and guardians alike are finding it almost impossible to find places for their children. The social enterprise model must be used to source vacant and unused buildings to increase the capacity in local communities, especially in rural areas. Last of all, we would extend the parents' leave and benefit schemes to allow them to remain with their babies for longer in the first year of their lives. I ask Deputies to please support this motion.

Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Sinn Féin remains absolutely committed to delivering a public model of childcare, but we cannot wait on the perfect - things have to get better. While I accept there have been changes, parents and children need us to ensure we deal with the issues of affordability, accessibility and availability. Those are vital. Our plan is straightforward, namely, €345 million to deliver €10 per day childcare for parents. That is real affordability. We would allocate €53.8 million to provide an initial pay increase of €1.50 per hour to staff, with a commitment to further increases. We would allocate €106 million to extend maternity and parental benefit in order that parents can be with their child for its first year, and a further contingency fund of over €200 million to cover the cost of further pay increases for staff, increased core funding and expansion of capacity. We have given an absolute commitment to a review of core funding. We appreciate the particular issues there are with costs, the severity of the viability issue and we need to get into the nitty-gritty of what is necessary with respect to increases to core funding to ensure providers can continue delivering an essential service.

We have all been contacted by people, such as a lady in my constituency. She says she has two creches with 37 staff whom she supports. She says she is not sleeping at night and is worried about what she is going to do in future. She says the childcare system is not fit for purpose. She caters for nearly 200 children in both services and works an average of 80 hours per week, including weekends. She says the provider at all times has been left out and that she was reaching out to me to see if anything can be done to support the many stressed-out providers.

I need to put a question to the Minister and Minister of State that has come to me from a constituent. It relates to a legally registered children's residential centre with full registration. It is through the inspection. All the staff are fully Garda vetted but the centre is not in operation at the minute. I will pass on the details and hope the Minister and Minister of State can answer my question on that particular issue and we can get it addressed.

Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Deputy Kerrane for bringing forward the motion. I have listened to many of those who have spoken on it. There has been a bit of nitpicking as well. The Leas-Cheann Comhairle used the word "transformative" in her contribution, but this is about doing things right. If we are speaking in plain English here, this is about giving parents additional time for their child to grow up with them. It is about making childcare affordable. It is about taking the pressure off families. It is also about supporting workers. We are aware of the wages and so on and so forth. Deputy Kerrane's motion is about using everything that is available now. Of course we want to look at a publicly funded model, but this is something we can roll out very quickly. It can be beneficial very quickly. I always say that from a tiny little acorn grows a mighty oak tree. The services childcare providers provide are one of the best building blocks on the planet. Despite this, we are not treating them with dignity or respect. I ask the Government to withdraw its countermotion, support our motion and let it be effective. It will happen very quickly.

It will support the workers and their families. The knock-on effect of this will be absolutely and utterly beneficial from all angles. I ask the Minister to please withdraw the countermotion. As I said, things can be amended, but we must work together. We are all trying to do the right thing here. I ask the Minister to please support our motion.

Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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I was disappointed to see a good chunk of the Minister's amendment criticising the plan I launched last week. He does not have to like the plan, of course. I am not interested in that kind of politicking. I do not do it. I do not believe that the parents are interested in it either. The Minister sees our plan as having no vision. Our plan has a vision and is the actual way to get to €10 per day. If we strip everything out of it, the fact is that we are spending €1.2 billion of taxpayers' money, and those taxpayers are still paying up to €1,500 per month for childcare. Something is very wrong when that is the situation. For approximately €106 million, we can take in everyone in a childcare setting and everyone with a Tusla-registered childminder now and give the parents €10 per day for childcare. That can allow them to go to work. It can improve child development and can prepare them for school. It is transformative for parents and children and for the childcare sector. That can be done. It would be the best €106 million we could spend.

With regard to the early years educators, again, the Minister in his amended motion stated that pay has increased. The most recent pay increase was 65 cent. That is a slap in the face to these professionals. That is why they are leaving the sector. If we do not move quickly with regard to pay and ring-fence it and do it ourselves rather than leaving it solely up to the joint labour committee, JLC, more and more people are going to leave the sector and that is going to leave us with less and less capacity. In fairness, the Minister had a prime opportunity in the last four years to look at doing what the Partnership for the Public Good did. In its terms of reference, it could not look at a public model of funding. The Minister could have done that in the last four years given that he said his party is committed to it. That work could have been done to look at the public model about which much has been said tonight. I do not believe that politicians should design the public model. I am absolutely committed to it. I am actually uncomfortable with profit being made in this sector, but we cannot get to the public model overnight. It has never been looked at in an Irish context. Parents and particularly educators in the sector cannot wait. They need better pay. Parents need reduced costs. That has to be done, and the best way to do that is to look at the model we are suggesting.

In the last few seconds, I want to mention the issue of flexibility for parents' leave and benefit. The Minister stated in the amended motion that we are at 46 weeks. However, lone parents or one-parent families are at 35 weeks. What we are putting forward is the additional nine weeks their baby does not get if a child is born into a one-parent family. I have raised this with Heather Humphreys and I hope the Minister will do likewise. They get the 26 weeks in the case of a mother and another nine weeks, and in a two-parent family, they get the 26 weeks and another 18 weeks. We are bringing forward a proposal to end that discrimination and provide the extra nine weeks, which should be there and should always have been there for that baby, and propose an additional eight weeks to get them to 52 weeks. It is nowhere near 46 weeks for one-parent families. That is wrong and it should be fixed.

Lastly, what is there today is not affordable, it is not accessible and the flexibility for parents is not there. We have a major issue with regard to waiting lists. There are 33,000 children on waiting lists for childcare places. Our proposals are quick ways in which we can build capacity. It has to be the commitment to the early years educators in the sector if we are to keep them, otherwise they are going to keep leaving. We have to give them the commitment that we will continue to increase their pay and then in some way they might decide to remain on and not go and study something else. We have to give them that certainty. Then, looking at the social enterprise model, I can think of five community centres in my area that are either vacant all of the time or underused during the day. Let us use those buildings. We do not need to go through 18 months of planning permission. Let us do it in a community, not-for-profit way, which brings us to that public model as well. We have to be innovative in building capacity and we have to build it quickly. With regard to childminders, we must of course bring them in in a fair way and in a way that suits them and does not add too much red tape to what we are already doing. That, too, will build capacity, but we need to build it and we need to build it quickly, and that is what our motion is about.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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The division is deferred until the weekly division time next week.