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

The Government has shown its commitment by increasing the child care budget by one third. While we would love to do more, even if we had more money the sector has highlighted that there are capacity issues, and that is why we have done it in a staged and staggered fashion. We want affordable and accessible child care, and we want quality child care. I will not engage in an ideological argument as to whether it should be purely public or private. We have community facilities which are very much supported by the Government, and we have private providers.

We have made provision to expand the community child care subvention scheme to private providers in areas where there is no community facility. We understand that this is a barrier for people returning to work, particularly women. We want to remove the barrier. We cannot do it all in one fell swoop. We have an interdepartmental group that lays out a clear pathway for the future and future investment in this area, which is one of the key areas for the Government into the future.

See this speech in context