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

The scheme does not start until September 2017. How long does the funding of 32 million run into next year? What is the full year cost of the universal and targeted elements? I am in favour of targeted and universal elements. I recognise that people working in child care have to be paid properly and so on, and that we need to develop capacity. Given all of those requirements and the fact that we need funding for a full year, can the funding really deliver on all of those fronts?

To what extent is the money that had been available to schemes that are now being wound up being rolled into this money? In other words, how much of the money is new money? I met a lone parent earlier. She explained that the closure of the community employment childcare, CEC, programme and the childcare education and training support, CETS, programme means that the maximum contribution those working on a community employment scheme had to pay is now gone. They will end up having to pay more. Lone parents will have to pay more. The new scheme will be a disincentive. We will not have labour activation, but labour deactivation.

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