Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am afraid I cannot agree with the Deputy's thesis and assessment regarding this Government's commitment to children and our response to the needs of children and the need to support their families. I would argue that the needs of children are actually at the heart of what the Government does. We invest in children because we know it makes sense; investment in children gives them opportunities for the future and, if anything, will save us money in the future. Providing care for children and support for education and health care is very much a large part of what the Government does.

Looking back over the seven years I have been in government, to give a few examples of what is not just rhetoric but is real action and real substance, there was: the establishment, for the first time, of a full Minister for Children and Youth Affairs sitting at the Cabinet table as well as of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs; there was the establishment of Tusla, a dedicated agency for child protection, because the HSE was not prioritising it enough; and, after many years of promises, mandatory reporting was brought in last December. The introduction of subsidised child care was, again, talked about for decades and is now a reality. Everyone between the ages of six months and three years, for example, receives subsidised child care. There are two years of free preschool education where there was only one before - and none before that. In education, there are record numbers of special needs assistants, SNAs. We have never had more SNAs in our education system. That is a recognition of the need that is there. In health, as I mentioned before, in the past, children with severe disabilities in receipt of the domiciliary care allowance got a medical card based on their parents' income. That was the case when the Deputy served as Minister for Health. We changed all that and now children with severe disabilities, 40,000 of them, get a medical card as a right regardless of their parents' income, and no longer face the kind of reviews that caused people enormous worry in the past, including in all those decades when Fianna Fáil was in office.

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