Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for her response. The reason I asked the question, in light of the fact the scheme would be in before September 2017 and the fact that people were led to believe what their entitlements might have been, is that there will be a gap between the qualifications for certain families. There are approximately 9,000 families more or less who will not qualify but who will get the subsidy. Fees are not publicly displayed and are quite hard to get. There is no databases as to what the standard is throughout the country for fees. Given that there is so much talk about the sector around wages and the difficulties of recruitment and retention of staff in the sector, this might have been seen as an opportunity by some employers or crèches to pass it on directly to staff. My concern is around the numbers of people who will not be receiving anything other than the 50 cent per hour. If the subsidy is passed on directly to the staff then the parents would have the shortfall, leaving them worse off than they would have been in the previous year.

See this speech in context