Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Molaim an Teachta Robert Troy as ucht an rún seo a chur ós comhair an Tí. Creidim go bhfuil go leor ceisteanna sa rún atá thar a bheith tábhachtach do dhuine ar bith atá ag plé le cúram leanaí nó atá ag tógáil leanaí. Tá go leor dúshlán roimh tuismitheoirí an lae inniu.

Unfortunately in the time available, I will not have an opportunity to span the huge number of issues that have been raised in the motion put forward by Deputy Troy. It is interesting to note that before the previous election, a second year of free early education was promised, but that did not happen. When the Minister went ahead with a decision to reduce the age, from 13, which was set when I was Minister, to seven, at which entitlement to lone parent's allowance would be stopped, she promised we would have a Scandinavian-type child care service for the parents involved. I understand the scheme that was introduced was availed of by approximately 200 parents.

When the age at which the cessation of entitlement to allowance was reduced from 22 to 13, it is reasonable to say that there was no reason a lone parent or the parent in a one-parent family could not work because of child care commitments. As I used often to say, one could have had a scenario under the old regime where the child could have been in the same class in university as the parent and he or she being paid lone parent's allowance and not being required to seek employment on the basis that he or she needed to care for the child. That was not a sustainable or a good situation, and most of the lone parent groups accepted that.

The initial proposal was to reduce the age to 12, but I raised it to 13 on the basis that some children are still in primary school until their 13th year and they are in school for a relatively short day. I thought that in the case of secondary school children, parents could make arrangements to have cover for the period from when the child would leave school until they would come home from work. Also, children of that age are not as dependent on their parents as younger children. I still believe that the reduction of the age to seven, without pervasive backup services throughout the country, is too young. The Minister, in introducing that change without backup changes in child care services, was unfair to one-parent families. I still believe she should re-examine that issue.

I wish to touch on the lack of a career structure in the child care sector. The sector has grown incrementally, which means there is not a proper career structure for people involved in it. That should be introduced and a proper structures should be put in place. A dialogue should be engaged in that would obviate the necessity for people to protest outside Leinster House on this matter.

I want to deal with he issue of the day-to-day reality faced by many parents, which is not necessarily directly related to the quality of child care provision, although that is very important. As the Minister is aware, 100,000 people are in mortgage arrears. That is 100,000 families. In many of those cases there are young children involved and in very many of those cases it will take two incomes to come to a resolution of the financial difficulties. The problem is that there is no assistance or recognition given to the cost of child care for these families, except in terms of the medical card. If one takes a person earning €800 a week, when the universal social charge, income tax, PRSI, union fees and other deductions are made, 50% of the wage is left, leaving the person with €400 a week. If one deducts €200 a week for child care costs, especially if the parent has to travel and therefore has a long day away from the home, that means for their 40 hours of work, they have €200 to contribute to the household costs and the mortgage. These are a particularly hard-pressed group of people in our society. Some of them have better jobs than others, but if they do, they also tend to have big mortgages. Those mortgages were taken out in the Celtic tiger era when people had expected, for example, that there would be promotions within the public service rather than cutbacks and that they would be on an upward career path over time rather than what happened. In some cases people over-stretched themselves in their ambition in terms of, perhaps, buying a house that was slightly beyond their means in the expectation that, over time, most people's income increases, but that did not happen. As I have often pointed out, if one takes the example of a couple comprising two executive officers in the Civil Service who bought a house in 2005, they would have expected to get increments, an increase in their wages and promotions between 2005 and 2014, but due to the fact that there has not been recruitment, which was necessary, the introduction of the pensions levy and so on, what was a reasonable expectation changed into something different. For those who do not have high mortgages or child care costs and have progressed in their careers before this happened, most of that period was difficult but bearable, but for the people caught in the perfect storm, even those in relatively secure employment, and many people were not in secure employment, they found that the two ends did not meet.

One of the challenges which has to be tackled is how one differentiates between those who incur large costs because they have children and those who do not. We must remember that children are the future of our country. We need to formally recognise that those incurring high child care costs because they have to work need assistance. This goes beyond the much wider issue, which I accept is valid, of the development of the child by providing preschool education, etc., and goes to the hard, day-to-day reality for many people who are trying to survive in the circumstance in which they find themselves. That is the challenge we face in trying to isolate the scarce resources to help those who need it most.

Children are part of a family, but children and, therefore, families are the future because it is the children of this generation who will be the providers in the next generation. If we do not sustain families in reasonable comfort and allow them the ability to provide the normal things a child would expect growing up, we are not only being very unfair to families and children, but we are damaging the future of this country. I would like to say many other things, but unfortunately I am out of time.

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