Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

Will the Government provide child care places? Not at all. Who will deal with the issue of supply? The attitude is to throw some money at it and others will take up the responsibility. We consistently argue that the responsibility is on the State to make provision. While we wish well those providing private care or care in the community well, the responsibility in the first instance lies with the State. I recommend again that the Government examine better and best practice in other jurisdictions. The Scandinavian model, and particularly the Swedish model which is in place for more that 30 years, is one from which the Government could learn quite an amount.

We also point out that no reference is made to the importance of making child care a viable option for young men and women as a career choice. There is no indication of a national pay scale for child care workers, which is essential if we are to bring that area into the mainstream where it belongs.

If there is a fatal flaw in all that we heard today, it is in the biggest-spending Department, which is in the hands of the Progressive Democrats — the Department of Health and Children. The Government may hope the measures announced today will take the heat out of child care as an election issue. They will not and it is wrong because the issue will continue to be a major focus for Sinn Féin, other voices in this House and, I have no doubt, for those beyond this House campaigning on this. More significantly, the fundamentally flawed approach to our health service by this Government will come back to haunt it as surely as that approach has caused so much misery to so many people and prevented the development of what should be the best health service in Europe.

Look at the contradictions at the heart of this Government. Prior to the last general election, Fianna Fáil stated it wanted to end the two-tier health system. The Tánaiste denies a two-tier system exists. She goes further. Exactly a year ago she stated: "I believe in a minimalist role for the State in all our lives, including health care." I can tell the Ministers for Finance and Health and Children that she had no need to state that to the people of Cavan and Monaghan where her abject neglect in the provision of hospital services and of the health care needs of the people of those two Border counties is known and experienced and suffered daily.

See this speech in context