Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I welcome that response but I reiterate that all the research shows that low income families in particular find it difficult to access child care and the average family spends more than 25% of their take-home pay on child care, which is twice what is paid in the European Union. My sister raised her two children in Sweden where the child care facilities were second to none, but it was all publicly run and publicly funded. One paid a small amount into it but it was run by the local commune and it was an excellent facility. There was talk in the previous Government of moving to that kind of model because there are many problems with private child care. I do not know if the Minister is aware of a strike in Kilcoole, County Wicklow in a privatised child care facility called the National Childminding Association of Ireland, which is in receipt of €340,000 of the Department's money annually but which is forcing redundancy on long-term staff with between eight and 15 years service and there is talk of replacing those staff members. That is not redundancy. If it is getting rid of staff it is because the jobs no longer exist. I will ask the Minister a direct question on that later but I am using that example to illustrate that problems can and do exist with private child care providers and we would like to see us moving to a publicly provided model.

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