Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

Regarding Deputy Sargent's first point, it was because the groups who looked at the issue four years ago were unable to reach an agreement on a scheme that the Government decided the best way forward was to put resources into child benefit. That left child care decisions with families. A person who reared a child at home all of the time got increases in benefit at the same level as others. That Government decision was made after the long debate which took place in 1999 and 2000. The benefit was increased from about €38 at the time to €141 currently. It was a substantial increase in the overall benefit from about €0.5 billion to some €2 billion.

Under the equal opportunities programme we have moved from having almost no child care places to a total of 33,000 places.

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