Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I understand and agree. What this is has shown is the read-across for other people working in environments where childcare has an impact. If this conversation does nothing else, we can finally put to bed the idea that childcare is a woman's issue or a man's issue. It is a societal issue and if we want to have children and to work, and to have a productive and caring society, we need to think collectively about how we are delivering flexible, supported and secure childcare to all parents. We need to recognise they do not have one job – again, job is not the right word - but that they have two roles in society and both of those need to be supported.

The Department of Children and Youth Affairs comes before the committee later and, like other members of the committee, I will be asking it about its engagement, so I will leave that for the moment.

As a final point, given my time is nearly up, I want to ask Mr. Bell about one of the two anecdotal cases. A member advised SIPTU that her child was four and her parents were elderly and cocooning. She was working a normal roster pattern of 12 hours a day. She was able to source private childcare but the financial costs were so prohibitive that she was not able to take it up. What happened?