James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. People often speak about the Government spending 0.2% on children when compared with other OECD countries. However, in reality is it more than 0.4%, which is still lower than it should be, when we take into account the moneys spent elsewhere in education, social protection and now our commitment, on which I commend the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, and the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, to give free GP care to all children under six.

This morning I launched a new initiative, called Better Start, which is to support early childhood care and education providers. It is a mentoring service with 30 highly qualified mentors who will visit and support providers with ongoing advice on how to improve quality and care in the work they do. I welcome this as an initiative that will support people as they continue their professional development through life, which is something we need to do in all areas. It has existed for years for doctors and nurses.

The cost of child care is like a second mortgage and the Government has acknowledged that many families are struggling. That is why this group was established. It is not to come up with a wish list but to come up with properly analysed evidence-based options from which the Government can choose. They need to be properly costed so that we can start a process to address this. I favour giving parents a choice and affording Government the opportunity to have an input into standards and quality of the placements available, much as the ECCE programme works now.

We need more investment in child care and I will strongly fight for that. The Deputy compared the costs here to those in the United States. It is not that they are out of kilter per se, but the issue is our ability to subsidise care costs and we need to address that.

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