Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am happy to speak on this Bill. While I understand that one of its main purposes is to provide a legislative underpinning for the establishment of a new national scheme which will provide financial support for child care through universal and targeted subsidies, I have major reservations about its likely impact and effectiveness. The problems at this stage are well known. I was involved in setting up a naíonra and was chairman of its board, in my village of Caisleán Nua, cúig nó deich bliain ó shin. I still have a peripheral involvement in trying to support it in any way I can. It is a wonderful institution organised by a voluntary board, brought from seed to purchase of a site, design, building and delivery. The former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, officially opened it for us. It is going well, providing exceptional care and tuition for the daoine óga, na cailíní agus na buachaillí óga, from preschool to under-fives and then to after school. I am delighted to be back visiting it again dropping off my granddaughter, Amy, who is four, any time I get a chance on a Monday or Friday. There is a lovely warm, welcoming atmosphere. It is a community effort and a huge employer in our small rural village.

We have seen how there is widespread fear among providers about the possibility of excessive State control of their businesses, and in particular how the scheme is set to increase an already overburdened sector with even more red tape. Red seems to be the word - dearg. Red tape and bureaucracy seem to be the hallmark of this Government, the previous Government and the one before that. It is so cumbersome and frightening. Speaking as a business person I know how difficult it is for a voluntary board and group to organise and run a child care facility, keep it going, give excellent care and comply with all the regulations, which it is bound to do, for health and safety, child welfare, and hazard analysis and critical control point, HACCP, where food is involved. I support all that but it is bonkers to use a word used by the Minister’s Cabinet colleague on budget day about the unfairness of the pension anomalies introduced by the former Minister, Deputy Burton, in 2012. She does not like to be reminded of that but that is what it was. There have been a couple of schemes for early childhood schools and we should be able to make them less bureaucratic, more user-friendly for the child, na daoine óga, the buachaillí agus na cailíní óga, their parents and guardians and the staff and management of the child care unit. Instead, the Government does not seem to be able to grasp this. I am not laying all of it but a good lot of it at the Minister's door. She is the boss. Surely to God the officials and senior officials could learn to do something less cumbersome with less red tape.

The former Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny, said several times during the talks to form this Government, and when he formed the Government, that it was new politics, new arrangements. He said the public had given them a right good wallop and he could not form a Government without the help of Independents. The Minister jumped in with him very surprisingly. We had a meeting one day and we are all ad idemon not voting for anyone and few minutes later the Minister was signed up to Enda's wagon. That is her prerogative and decision. I wish her well and she can suffer the consequences as well, whichever way it goes. Whatever way she wants her cake, she can eat it. He promised and committed time and again that with the change that came from the voters who wanted change and new politics there would be a sea change in the public service, especially in senior public service, but nothing has changed. It has got worse. We were promised rural-proofing of legislation - not at all. To hell with rural Ireland, once there is plenty of money to invest in Dublin. All the thinking is Dublin-centric and to hell with all small providers and voluntary boards.

It was women in the main who started minding children and then got into the system and provided wonderful care and tuition to our very vital future, our young. Mol an óige agus tiocfaidh siad. Nothing has changed. It is more bureaucratic and cumbersome. Pobal was set up by Albert Reynolds when we were dealing with the other group responsible for child care funding - I cannot remember what it was - and it was supposed to cut out the red tape and streamline it. Instead, it has added layer and layer. It would be a great organisation for a person to go out in on a winter's night because they would be well-clothed, well-warmed and would not get the cold as they would this evening because there are layers of bureaucracy.

Families have been in touch with me to say that they simply cannot find child care providers willing to operate under the proposed scheme. I am sure they are telling every other Teachta Dála the same thing. If the Minister had done any little impact analysis of the effect of this scheme, she would know that herself. She does know it but there are none so blind as those who do not want to see. There are cosy arrangements and the Minister is happy to let them drift on and let the providers go to hell or to Connacht. The providers are telling parents that they will not sign up and so the parents are being left high and dry. That is an awful situation for couples, parents, single parents, guardians and whatever. They are trying to keep their employment to pay their mortgages to keep a roof, they are trying to keep up the numbers to keep the child care in their area going and then they are being told sorry and they are being left high and dry. That is a very difficult situation for them to be in with their employers and some of them are self-employed. The apparent solution has in fact become very much part of the problem.

I also want to address the fact that while the Bill provides for childminders to mind children in the childminder's own home, which I welcome, it is effectively useless when it comes to supporting those parents who wish to be supported after deciding to mind their own children at home. That is an awful problem. There seems to be something wrong with allowing our children to be educated at home. Everything is geared to forget the excellent homemakers. I salute the homemakers who day and night look after their children at home. It was a noble profession that served this State well down through the centuries. We were all well looked after at home, thank God, and good values were instilled in us. Now the home is the last place the Minister wants children to be. She wants them farmed out to any place bar home. It is unbelievable that this is the situation. The Bill is useless when it comes to supporting those parents who wish to be supported after deciding to mind children at home.

Time and again we have seen research which proves that public policy should be a response to what the public actually want unless there is a strong, compelling reason to do otherwise. That is a telling line. We are whizz kids and new people but the Labour Party carries a lot of the blame for this too.

It could not wait to get all this liberal legislation. It gave us a diet of it for five years here. I warned time and time again that it would not get it a lot of votes and it did not. It came back with six or seven Deputies. I said they would come back in a car but they came back in an eight-seater. It gave us a diet of it for years from Ruairí Quinn down.

Child care policy is mainly about early years care because that is when children are most dependent. These are vital years. When people are asked about what they regard as the best child care option for children under the age of five, research reveals that only a small minority, at 17%, see placing a child in day care as the most desirable option. These are not my figures. They come from research in case the Minister thinks they are my figures. I said earlier that I am not backward. I am not speaking from the caves. I am speaking as a man who was chairman of a naíonra I set up. I am not anti-child care. I am all for it but we cannot beat children out of the home like we would beat rabbits out of the bushes. "Don't have them at home" is a disaster as far as I am concerned. However despite this, the Government, and this Minister for children in particular, seem absolutely intent on bulldozing through a policy that is in no way responsive to the actual desired preferences of parents when it comes to child minding options.

The statistics are there if the Minister wants to look at them but she brings her own flavour and very personal stamp to this. I do not like it, will not accept it and will rail against it anywhere I can. We have to ask ourselves why that is the case. The Minister even rejects and flies in the face of research carried out by respected organisations. Just what has this Government and this Minister got against parents who do not wish to send their children to crèches and day care but who instead wish to be supported in their preference to look after their children at home? That is a very frank question and I hope the Minister will address it when she replies to me.

What has she got against families who want to keep their children at home, educate and mind them at home and give them the best nurturing and bonding they can get in their own traditions in the home in a safe environment? The previous Bill this evening was about cyberbullying. The safest place for children is in the home but, unfortunately, the homes have been penetrated by the Web, emails and everything else. At the very least, the State should adopt a neutral approach when it comes to making provision for child care and the manner in which subsidies are directed. At the very least, the Minister should do this but the fact that she wants to continue her vision and passion to take it away from the home is very concerning - for me anyway. I am sure other people can speak for themselves. Instead what we are seeing is a concerted push to drive parents into the workplace when in the majority of cases, it is their express wish to remain either at home or to be employed part time so they look after children at home. We are seeing "push, push, push into the workplace" the whole time so the Government can get the figures down and talk about "recovery, recovery and recovery", which was the Fine Gael mantra during the last election. It did not get it very far either because it is false and involves juggling and manicuring figures.

The pressure is put on individual parents all the time. Far from respecting the wishes of parents, and women in particular, and the Minister is a woman, this Bill is actually extremely anti-woman. There is evidence to prove that. How do we know this? The available data makes it clear. The national household survey from the third quarter of 2016, this is not 20 years ago, produced by the Central Statistics Office, which we all trust, showed that 315,000 women were working part time compared with 146,000 men. This is a telling figure in itself. However, 83% of part-time working women did not regard themselves as underemployed. The equivalent figure for men was 67%. These are not my figures. They are from a report produced by the CSO in the third quarter of 2016, which is little over a year ago.

What this Bill will ultimately do is entrench a systemic level of unfairness into the options around child care provision. I believe that. We talk about equality. We all rant and rave about it but where is it here? We are going in the opposite direction. We are saying one thing and doing the other. That is why I would have great difficulty supporting the Bill, even if I understand the need to offer working parents relief on exorbitant child care costs. The costs are quite exorbitant, particularly in the cities and particularly this city. These are added to the costs of transport and everything else.

I appeal to the Minister to go back to the drawing board, to reflect on some of what I have said, possibly answer my questions and issue retorts if she feels what I have said is inaccurate or misleading. I am saying this honestly. I have a large family and have had experience of them being minded at home and then being sometimes minded by neighbours or women who minded a couple of children in their homes. Indeed, I had children who went to the naíonra about which I spoke earlier so I have wide experience.

I went through the university of life in this area. I now have grandchildren, one aged four who is attending the naíonra and one aged 15 months who is being minded in a house by an excellent carer in Cluain Meala so I have a fair bit of experience. There is nothing like walking the walk if you want to talk the talk. You have to get down and dirty if you want to understand what really goes on. There are a lot of problems here and I am very unhappy with this legislation. I am unhappy about a number of pieces of legislation that all seem to emphasise that women must get out of the home and that they are not home makers anymore. They must be out in a place of employment. Then we wonder why we have problems with our young people and teenagers.

The home bond is the most vital of all - with the mother in the first instance and indeed the father or whatever arrangement there is. You will never buy it and you cannot package it. You cannot even aspire to it. It is there and is very real and tangible. It is true love and is nurturing. Whatever faith the parents have, they can pass it on and nurture children in their own beliefs, ways, habits and practices.

Apart from the cost of it and the unfairness of it in that area, there is unfairness regarding small child care providers at home and the community groups. This cannot all be commercial or commodified as if it is a commodity we are looking after. They are our future. When we are long imithe as an tír, we hope they will be around and raising their families. I believe an undermining situation is happening and I do not like it and will rail and fight against it. The unfairness and red tape are separate aspects because if we want a scheme to be successful, we do some kind of impact analysis and ask the people. We should ask the administrators of what used to be the county childcare committees, on which I also served. I served on them a number of times so I have a fair bit of experience in this field apart from being a father and a granddad. I served in all those areas. We should ask them.

I could not say enough about the HSE officials we dealt with at the time, like Phil Mackey and many others. Ask them how they are getting on. They are getting the feedback. They are getting it between the eyes every day of the week. The regime is so regimented. It is like a blindfolded jennet running so far that it cannot be stopped. Stop, halt, stad and just listen. Do not be afraid to go back and correct the mistakes before more of them are made and we lose many valuable small providers of child care in their homes and some very small community crèches. There are exceptional centres from Carrick-on-Suir right up to Kilsheelan to Clonmel. Several of them are in Clonmel. They are also in Cahir and my own village of Caislean Nua na Suir and right up to Cashel, Tipperary Town and Bansha. They are all over the place - Greenacres, Little Treasures. So many of them have wonderful names. All they want is to be allowed to continue to provide and pass on that nurturing care and early education to those young children and that we entrust them with the care of our children. They love it. They would not do it otherwise. It is a passion and vocation. They continue up into north Tipperary to Thurles and all the towns and villages. They are the lifeblood of the community because we have taken away everything else.

The last bastion was the public house and that is under permanent attack from the Minister, Deputy Ross. Let them flourish.

Little Treasures, a wonderful institution, is the one I could not think of in New Inn. We had a problem earlier this year with bus tickets, but they are so helpful; they drop off the children at 7 a.m. and mind them until they get on a bus to go to national school. They take them in again in the evening. The parents have a huge bond with those groups and those well-run and managed crèches because they would not leave their kids otherwise; none of us would. It would be unnatural to leave them some place that we did not trust or did not like.

What I do not like about this is that I do not trust the Government. While it is nothing personal, I do not trust the Minister's bona fides in the area. I do not like what I see. I do not like the angle that is being pushed, manoeuvred and manipulated to try to ensure the last place children are minded is in the home. We have so many homeless and then we try to undermine the homes we have. We have a lot to learn in this.

I know the Minister is new; I expected different and better from her. However, we are where we are, as the saying goes. I appeal to her to make haste slowly here, go back to the drawing board and examine the flaws in this. These are not my words. There is noted research from reputable companies and the CSO. We also have an examination from HSE and Tusla officials who are dealing with institutions. They will tell the Minister very fast that it is a failure.

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