Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is very wrong for a worker to feel that one must leave kids at home to be able to, or to be forced to, go to work. It is absolutely disgraceful. I joined others standing here in the Chamber in applauding the front-line healthcare workers. I felt at the time it was the right thing to do. I have been contacted by large numbers of front-line healthcare workers who at the time, as Ms Ní Sheaghdha has rightly pointed out, were happy to receive that level of recognition, but there was no follow-up. As we head into the summer and into the reopening and restarting of non-Covid-19 related care, there are no facilities in place for specific arrangements for front-line healthcare workers.

More and more people will contact Deputies through their constituency offices in the coming weeks to state that crèches simply will not take their children. Mr. Bell is correct that we need an information campaign, but we also need a bit of action from the Government on this issue. That does not seem to have happened up to this point.

Mr. Bell referred to his members being excluded from the survey. The survey was undertaken but his union and members were not consulted or involved in it.