Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Is mór an náire é don Rialtas seo gur theip air cúram leanaí a sholáthair dár n-oibrithe sláinte i lár na paindéime seo. The failure of the State the Government to provide basic childcare for our front-line workers, particularly nurses and doctors in the middle of this pandemic, is breathtaking. After eight weeks of spin and public relations management - two months in which the problem was recognised - there has been an abject failure to deliver any kind of childcare for those on the front line. This is because we have a hopelessly fragmented and complex system of preschool childcare and a hopelessly inadequate and equally fragmented system of after-school childcare. We have multiple schemes with the burden of cost shouldered mostly by parents in a sector with many large and small private providers employing dedicated but low-paid staff, often on precarious contracts.

There is little or any attempt to have oversight or attempt to ensure universality in terms of working conditions and standards across the sector. It is a fragmented system of childcare in which the State has absolved itself of responsibility and has overseen a largely privatised system growing in response to the needs of working people. As with many issues, this failure stems from a wider failure of this State to provide for universal care. We have seen it in nursing homes, our hospital system and direct provision, where we contract and subcontract the care and needs of key public services. We can thank consecutive Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil-led Governments for this move towards neoliberal privatisation.

I suggest this failure is not about public liability insurance, although it may form an element of it. It is not just about the lack of uptake from childcare workers, although how it was not possible for the State to provide rewarding terms for those workers is beyond me. It is a wider and systemic failure, and this pandemic is revealing much about how normal privatised and neoliberal models that let us down in normal times have become massive roadblocks in the middle of a crisis like this pandemic. We have ended up firefighting the symptoms and, so far, we are failing in the childcare area.

The only real question I want the Minister to address relates to the demand from nurses' unions and others for the €4.2 million per week of the defunct scheme that she mentioned to be transferred to front-line workers to compensate them for the money they have paid, and will continue paying, for childcare because the State has failed to provide it. I support that demand. Will the Minister? If there is €4.2 million to provide for the care of front-line workers' children, why can it not be transferred into the pockets of workers and doctors, many of whom we know from their evidence are paying hundreds of euro per week to have their kids minded while they go to work for our sakes?

See this speech in context