James Bannon (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)

I support this motion and thank my colleague, Deputy Shatter, for raising this important issue. Whether the Minister hears it or not, the public has spoken. As a director and board member of the Legan Childcare Committee, I have my finger on the pulse of public opinion. The concerted outcry against the proposed new subvention scheme for funding community child care is deafening, and only someone with a closed mind and blocked ears could fail to hear it or judge its meaning. Rebellion is in the air. We planned to invite the Minister to officially open the new child care facility in my parish, but we decided against it because we did not want to have his bones as stepping stones.

Time and again the Opposition has highlighted the lack of joined up thinking in Government policy. In my own area of Longford and Westmeath there has been considerable development in the child care sector since the equal opportunities child care programme was introduced in 2000. Grant aid has resulted in the building of seven new child care facilities and the upgrading of three more, with a total of 20 in Longford alone, and an increase in staff from 25 to almost 200 in the sector. Seven years later these facilities face closure. I am glad the Minister has had to row back to a certain extent due to public opinion, however the scheme will cause the price of child care to rise by up to 65% to meet the shortfall in funding.

These cutbacks will force women back to the dark ages, or place them back in the role set out for them under Article 41.2.1 of the Constitution. Article 41.2.2 makes provision for the regulation of women's lives and states that women should not be forced by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home. Is the Minister trying to tell us indirectly that he believes parents, women or men, should stay at home to look after their children and that in line with Scandinavian social policy, he will pay them to do so? I think not, so I ask the Minister to think again of the hardship he plans to visit on parents and children and the devastation he will cause in the child care sector, where newly built facilities will be forced to close and hand back the key and child care workers will face unemployment. This scenario is a serious threat not only to the freedom of parents to choose to participate in the workplace and to access affordable child care but to our economy and to the fabric of our society.

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