Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

As in so many areas, the Government is disastrously letting down children and parents. The cost of child care is a disaster, as is the failure of the State to invest adequately in providing affordable child care. The average cost of child care is €162 a week, but the cost can be as high as €1,000 or €2,000 a month. This means someone with average earnings of approximately €30,000 a year and two children would pay every cent earned after tax towards the cost of child care. It is completely unsustainable and unmanageable.

All of this has been made considerably worse by the impact of the Government's cuts and austerity, particularly the vicious cuts experienced by one-parent families. From the Government that talks so much about labour activation, the effect of the cut in the income disregard, which essentially was child care money for lone parents, has meant that employment levels among lone parents have gone from 60% in 2012, when that budget was passed, to 36%.

We now have the incredible situation where 32% of families in the country are in deprivation, but this rises to 63% for lone parents. This month, the situation for lone parents will be made even worse, and even more of them will be driven out of the work place due to the unaffordability of child care, because 58,000 one-parent families are receiving letters stating another €86 will be cut. This is all despite the Minister, Deputy Burton, stating none of these cuts would happen until we had a bankable workable Scandinavian child care system. What a sick joke that turned out to be.

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