Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

The Taoiseach has agreed that child care is a big issue. I accept his comment that it is impossible to put in place a perfect child care system overnight, given the absence of a decent system up to now. Having listened to the Taoiseach's response, however, it is unclear what the Government proposes to do. He said, for example, there are 2 million people in the workforce. Is the Taoiseach implying he will forget about the women — they tend to be women in the main — who are forced out of work because of the cost of child care or who make the choice to leave the workplace to look after their children for a period? Does he plan any legislative measures to address the question of flexible working and the right of the spouse, whichever one it is, to go back into the workforce? The Taoiseach does not appear to have thought about that and he appears to be confusing child care with child benefit.

Talking about confusion and NESC, I thought it was at Cavan that we had NESC, not at Clonmel. The Taoiseach can include NESC as part of the hegemony he has established over various quangos. I do not know what he learned in Cavan but from what I can see it was not very much. What is the Taoiseach's position on improving parental leave and pre-school education and does he plan to give any kind of legislative underpinning to the right of people to take up part-time work or to leave work for a period? On the question of stay-at-home spouses, does he intend to grant equal treatment for them in whatever measures are introduced for people at work?

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