Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

I repeat that the community child care subvention scheme is fundamentally flawed. As I stated last evening, we should be moving towards the universal provision of preschool child care. The mooted scheme moves us in the opposite direction towards a two-tier structure that mirrors our grossly inequitable two-tier health service. We in Sinn Féin have set out our vision of how the State should address the vitally important issue of child care. We believe the Government should work to achieve a set of goals within a definite timeframe. The goals include supporting the provision of the best care for all children; enabling all parents to reconcile their child care needs with participation in the labour force, education and training; enabling all parents to exercise their choice of care for their children full-time up to one year of age; enabling all parents to access affordable child care for their children; establishing universal State provision of preschool for all children from the age of three to five years; and establishing a universal provision of early childhood care and education based on the best international models.

In the interim, Sinn Féin has called on the Government to introduce a range of measures that include the harmonisation of maternity leave on an all-Ireland basis by increasing maternity leave from the current 26 weeks paid leave and extending unpaid maternity leave to 26 weeks.

See this speech in context