Ms Rachel Coyle:

It is not just childcare either; a lot of representatives care for older parents and others, and that is a deterrent to a lot of people when it comes to who is going to take up the opportunities. At least there are facilities for children. Carers have to fight for respite. In general, I take Deputy Costello's point.

Mention was made of a universal basic income. I am a trade unionist at heart, so I believe that collective bargaining is the best way to ensure workers are adequately compensated for their time. In general, how we talk about social welfare payments really needs to change. For example, people who carry out the caring function save the State an amount of money. It should be seen as a social participation. We need to change the narrative a little bit more about social welfare. We definitely need a wider conversation about public services in general; childcare being one of them. We advocate for a fully public model of childcare as the only way to ensure affordability and decent pay and conditions for workers. Generally, in terms of the role of the State in providing these things, we believe that leaving it to the market is unsustainable.

To drill into the family-friendly practices, at this point after the pandemic we are all familiar with the use of technology. I see the Oireachtas makes use of hybrid meetings. Perhaps we could have a conversation about meeting times and the fact that most childcare facilities do not accommodate evening sessions. When we think about local constituency engagements, a lot of them are really last minute, or they have to take place in the evening. We do need to reflect on those things. We definitely need to see more childcare allowances and care allowances in general.

Members of the Oireachtas have a team around them but at a local level councillors do not have that administrative support, in particular independent councillors or those who are perhaps the only representative of their party. In some local authorities they provide that type of administrative support offices for councillors and help of that nature.

Something that is a bit left field relates to the transparency of when and where we do our business. We know that a lot of women report that it is a men's club. There needs to be a bit of accountability around that as well.