Mary White (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The tragedy is that we spend three or four times more on third level education than we do on child care, when it is far too late. Before a child is born and from the minute a child comes into this world the money needs to go into developing the whole intellectual and emotional development of the child from day one. All the research shows that after two years it is too late. The children blossom early in the first two years and everything needs to focus on that. It needs to be totally under the State system, like the national and second level school system where there are teacher qualification standards. Our national aspiration should be to integrate these early child care standards into the State-run education system with highly educated teachers.