Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the motion. I commend Deputy Funchion on her consistency on this issue. It is a very good, structured motion. I welcome some elements of the Minister's statement, especially with regard to meeting representatives of SIPTU, and good luck with that. I put it to the Minister that it is not an exaggeration to say that the provision of childcare is extremely fragmented in Ireland, if not almost archaic. There are very high costs and the workforce of educators is underpaid and undervalued. According to the latest SIPTU survey of workers in the childcare sector, they are going under and leaving the sector. The SIPTU Covid-19 Back to Work survey shows that since the end of June some 29% of the workers indicated they are earning less than before the pandemic, with 32% of the workers intending to leave the sector in the next 12 months, which is very alarming. Most early years professionals earn below the living wage of €12.40 per hour. This has resulted in a turnover of more than 40% of workers leaving full day care services.

Only five months ago there was a huge demonstration of childcare workers. It seems like years ago but it happened five months ago, with at least 15,000 to 20,000 people attending that demonstration. It was one of the best demonstrations I had been on in a long time. Those workers were demanding a couple of simple things, including, obviously, pay and conditions. The early years educational sector is not working for those workers, it is not working for parents and it is not working for children. We cannot be unambiguous about this. We need a State-led childcare system. It is a fact that in other countries such as the Scandinavian countries the best outcomes are State led. There is a very good article in today's edition ofThe Irish Timesthat names three of the leading countries with the best outcomes in childcare. They are Iceland, Sweden and Norway. They each spend more than €4.5 billion every year on childcare. The Oireachtas report says that Ireland needs to spend €2 billion to match that. We need to do this through general taxation. Hopefully this campaign is the start of a national childcare service that can benefit everybody, that is not fragmented and is not left to private operators. It should be a national service that benefits everybody.

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