Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Strangely enough, I received the Minister of State's response earlier on. It is a bit chaotic here because I was supposed to speak at 3.30 p.m. I was looking over the Minister of State's response and was listening to her when she was verbally responding. It is probably slightly misleading because I was just looking up the SIPTU average hourly rate for child care workers and it is €9.56. If a person is earning that, he or she will probably earn €380 per week for a very important job. I was at a major protest outside the Dáil about a year and a half ago about child care workers who have been so badly paid. There is a huge turnover of child care workers. The Government said that it would address it and so forth. From my research on this, Ireland had the highest cost of child care in the OECD but I do not know the position at this moment. It is a very important industry. It came into the news about two years ago because of the turnover of workers as well as job practice and employment legislation. I do not know if the Minister of State can comment on that.

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