Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)

I am sure that by now the Minister of State has heard all the arguments against the introduction of the new community child care subvention scheme, which is being introduced with no consultation with those people who are working at the coalface and those families who will be most affected. I am not going to baffle him with statistics, but I would like to give him two examples of the impact that this scheme will have on ordinary mothers. Last week I attended a public meeting on this issue and a young mother stood up and said "I am nobody, but my child is somebody." This is a young mother who, because of where she was born, has been labelled as disadvantaged all her life. She does not believe her child is disadvantaged and, like any mother, she wants the best for her child. This new subvention scheme, whether the Minister of State wants to believe it, will label children as disadvantaged. The second example is of a mother I met at a meeting last week. She was an early school leaver but is working part time after completing an adult education course. She is now in what the Government calls the modest income bracket, which means she will not benefit in any way from the new subvention scheme as she is slightly above the cut-off point.

Does the Minister of State realise what this scheme will do to communities? It will send people back to social welfare benefits, which is wrong in this day and age. The Government needs to pay more than lip service to creating equality and cherishing all of our children equally. I urge the Minister of State to consider his actions this evening. I call on those Ministers representing Dublin South-Central to consider the implications the scheme will have on a very sizable number of our constituents.

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