Regina Doherty (Fine Gael)
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I want to thank our guests today for not highlighting issues that we were already aware of. The frustration is that we are having the same conversations year in, year out. I say that as a person who was at the table in the Department of Social Protection five or six years ago. To my mind, the wheels of change are very slow. It feels like official Ireland and the patriarchal country that we still live in, whether we like it or not, does not really want the system to change. I recall attending meetings of the European Council with Norwegian, Finnish, Danish and Swedish colleagues who were a generation ahead of us with regard to childcare and gender equality. I always railed against the fact we linked the services we offered women, whether in the workplace or the home, the services we offered children, the interventions from an early perspective and the benefits that we got from women's participation in the workforce. It was done years ago, and a system was enforced where women went back to work so that other women could be paid poorly to mind their children without any regard for the impact on the child. That does not seem like a long time ago. I am of the view that the children should be first and centre, before the gender equality part. I am aware that one comes with the other. I note there is talk of establishing childcare educational campuses in our towns and communities, based off the back of State-owned facilities such as our schools and some larger community crèches. Why can we not advance that model, while still supporting the private home-from-home type model that we have enjoyed for many years in this country? I wonder what the witnesses think of us developing that childcare education campus model in all of our towns and villages. The biggest obstacle to achieving that is the fact that while as a State we pay for the development of the schools and the running of them, we do not own the buildings, and therefore do not control the usage of them. How do the witnesses feel we can get around that particular issue?