Áine Collins (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this motion. I cannot disagree with the tone of the Fianna Fáil motion. Every Member of this House is concerned with child welfare. We all wish that in an ideal world, a first-class and very affordable child care system would be generally available. Ideally, this should be based on the Nordic model but a huge investment is required to get to that stage. We saw a situation develop over the Celtic tiger years where child care could cost as much as a mortgage. The Celtic tiger has now vanished and people who bought houses during those years are now struggling with mortgages and huge child care costs. It is understandable that Fianna Fáil would like to rectify this situation in which parents find themselves, particularly as it happened on its watch, which it seems to have forgotten. Mind you, it abolished the early childcare supplement, which was worth €1,100 per year to parents of children under five. It is hypocritical of Fianna Fáil now to advocate increases in expenditure without telling us how it would find the money to implement all these changes. Would it be by increasing taxes or cutting expenditure in other areas, which we know are challenged? Let us hear the answers to some of these questions.

On the other hand, we can examine this Government's approach to child welfare to date. For the first time, we set up a dedicated Department for Children and Youth Affairs with a Cabinet Minister to ensure that children's welfare would be kept in its rightful place at the heart of Government. Good progress has been made so far. The Government prioritised and delivered a referendum on children's rights. A total of €260 million will be spent in 2014 on the early years programme. One in four parents would not have been able to send their children to preschool had it not been for the free preschool year.

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