Sandra McLellan (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate, not only as a public representative but as a parent who, like other Deputies in this House, has experienced first-hand the outworking of successive Governments' failure to oversee a coherent and equitable approach to child care provision. Families have suffered as a result. Those fortunate enough to have work are lumbered with an undue financial burden. Women, particularly low-paid women or those reliant on social welfare payments, continue to be excluded from participating in work. Workers in the sector face a future of low pay despite their training, and exacting standards are not being met.

Most important of all is the impact of this shortfall on children. Budgetary decisions by Government have made a bad situation worse. The Government has relentlessly targeted children despite all their fine words regarding our youngest citizens' rights. Budget 2015 may have increased the monthly child benefit payment by €5 but only after Fine Gael and the Labour Party cut it by €47 for the fourth child and €10 for other children. The Government has also cut the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance in successive budgets, amounting to a total cut of €100. This is a means-tested payment which is only made to children in the poorest of families and was already grossly insufficient to meet the real cost of returning to school. For families who are just about keeping their heads above water, this has been a devastating blow. The lone parent income disregard was cut from €146 to €90, as a consequence of which a working lone mother is down €28.

Many of our poorest children are in lone parent households and these cuts hurt them even more. In addition, this Government has lowered the cut-off age for the one-parent family payment to ten years of age and later this year it will drop it to just seven years of age. However, the Government has not put in place the necessary affordable after-school care which is required to keep these children safe while their mothers are forced out to work, despite the Labour Party leader promising she would not proceed with her planned cut to the lone parents scheme unless she had a credible, bankable commitment from Government on child care delivery. As is so often the case with the Labour Party, the Tánaiste over-promised and under-delivered.

The entirely foreseeable result of all of these cuts has been a sharp rise in child poverty. A report from UNICEF published last week put the child poverty rate at 28.6%, which accounts for 130,000 children. Ireland ranked 37 out of 41 countries studied. Child poverty rates are rising more steeply than here only in Croatia, Latvia, Greece and Iceland . In addition, the latest CSO figures tell us that one third of children are living in deprivation. These are children who do not have a warm coat or two pairs of strong shoes or who cannot afford to eat meat, chicken or fish every second day. These are children whose homes are not adequately heated. This is a direct consequence of the policies of this Government. It chooses to place the burden of recovery squarely on the shoulders of our most vulnerable children.

The Child and Family Agency published figures in early September which showed 9,000 children at risk or suffering from neglect or welfare concerns are waiting to be allocated a social worker. It reported that there were 3,250 high-priority cases over the summer waiting for a response. The bottom line is that, under the Government, recruiting and retaining social workers in sufficient numbers has not been a priority. Some 36,000 teachers in our classrooms have yet to be Garda vetted. Garda vetting is a cornerstone of the child protection system, but this Government has failed to resource the Garda vetting unit sufficiently.

Thousands of children with disabilities and severe life-limiting conditions had their medical cards withdrawn under this Government's so-called probity drive. Under intense pressure from the public, most of these were returned. However, some holders have begun to lose them again as the renewal dates come round. Children with disabilities and their carers have been neglected by this Government. Child care and after-school care remains unaffordable and inaccessible. However, this coming summer, the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection will lower the cut-off age to just seven years, regardless. This will impact on thousands of lone parents who are working a few hours each day while their child is at school, bringing in a low wage. They will lose the flexibilities and specific earnings disregards attached to the scheme. Her failure to deliver on child care coupled with her determination to proceed with the cuts to the scheme will push this group deeper into poverty and welfare dependency.

The cost of child care is extremely high in Ireland. It is the biggest cost facing most young families today. A recent survey demonstrated that a person would need to have a gross wage of €30,000 just to cover the cost of child care for one toddler and one baby. It costs up to €2,035 per month to keep a toddler and baby in a crèche. Thousands of couples are caught in a situation in which their mortgage was based on two full-time wages. However, when they start their family, they discover that one parent cannot afford to work but cannot afford not to work either. The Tánaiste, Deputy Joan Burton, compounded this by cutting payments to young families, such as child benefit and maternity benefit.

Many child care workers are grossly underpaid. Most are paid little more than the minimum wage and many are also expected to fund continual upskilling and education themselves. It is extremely unfair to expect child care workers with qualifications to provide such an important service for the minimum wage. Sinn Féin's budget 2015 proposed to address immediately the most significant inequity in existing public child care provision, which is the exclusion of many children with disabilities from the free preschool year. It will cost just €12 million to make the free preschool year accessible to many more children with disabilities. The sum of €12 million would provide 1,000 children with 15 hours per week of SNA support to attend the free preschool year.

This fund would supplement the existing ad hocprovisions from the HSE and other disability service providers, which are grossly insufficient. The free preschool year is supposed to be a universal benefit for all children, but many children with disabilities are prevented from availing of it due to the absence of the necessary supports. The availability of a special needs assistant to enable a child's attendance depends on where the child is living and ranges from none at all to cover for a portion of the week only. Many parents are forced to hire special needs assistants, or else the child is denied the opportunity to attend altogether.

Any review of the community child care subvention and child care education and training support schemes is focused on providing supports for low-income families and on keeping local community crèches open. We support the provision of restored core funding to all local community-based crèches. We want all councils to adopt a local authority child care policy. We will campaign for high-quality training for child care workers and an adequate inspection regime to ensure child care is of high quality and high standards. The Government could take a number of actions tomorrow in the absence of a coherent, affordable and equitable national child care strategy. I welcome the establishment of a cross-departmental group to look at provision across the age group of those aged six and under and to consider the after-school needs of older school-going children. Parents and their children do not need fine words and they certainly do not need the Labour Party's broken promises.

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