Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

People who can afford to pay for places must pay. We must have a tiered payment system. It is our business to ensure that child care is available throughout rural parishes, towns and villages. The equal opportunities childcare programme has been phenomenally successful.

The funding available to the Department next year for the child care subvention scheme, as part of the overall national child care investment programme, represents a 16% increase on what is available this year. Some people have said mischievously and some due to misinformation that we were abolishing the staffing grant scheme, but nothing could be further from the truth. We introduced a transition period to ensure that if there were emerging difficulties we would deal with them. We want to deal with them. We want to ensure that the €500 million that has been invested in child care since the Ceann Comhairle introduced the equal opportunities childcare programme is protected. We want to ensure that the €575 million that has been ring-fenced for the next few years contributes to enhanced child care in our country.

Deputy Feighan spoke about projects that were opened and approved in advance of the election. Will he tell me what projects in his constituency he would not have approved?

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