Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Funchion and Sinn Féin for tabling this motion and allowing us the opportunity to put the spotlight on childcare again. I congratulate the Minister and Minister of State on their appointments and I wish them the best of luck.

The Minister referred to this sector as "chaotic, inefficient and an indictment on our country", particularly in that it forces parents to pay the money and it is disproportionate to women. The Minister of State can correct me if I am wrong but I understand from the Green Party document on childcare that it is committed to public childcare. While I welcome the discussion, what is absent from the speeches is a commitment to public childcare and a recognition that childcare based on market driven ideology has not worked, is not working and will not work. If the Ministers do not believe me they need only look to the research. I agree with Deputy Naughten that the Government is kicking this down the road. I am all for consultation but what is missing is leadership. I am not sure which Minister will make the closing statement but if it is Deputy Rabbitte, who is a strong Fianna Fáil Deputy, she might show leadership in regard to the provision of public childcare, which is what we are looking for, and which came up on the doorsteps frequently, along with climate change, housing and public transport.

Again, I find myself thanking the Oireachtas Library and Research Service and the Parliamentary Budget Office on their excellent work. The key message in June of this year from their research - and they say more research is necessary - is that Ireland has the highest level of private provision of early childcare and education in the OECD, along with relatively low Government investment, low wages for educators and high fees for consumers. Let us make a connection here. I acknowledge the work done by the former Minister, Katherine Zappone, and her predecessor and the amount of money that goes into childcare but it is going in in a piecemeal fashion. It is being provided to enable people make a profit. There is nothing wrong with profit but not in childcare. We must have public childcare because the research shows it is best. The existing research shows it is best all round. It gives continuity, it is good for the children, it is good for the mothers and for parents.

The available research has identified positive outcomes of public early childcare programmes, including improvements in children's social and emotional development and an increase in maternal life satisfaction. The evidence also indicates that in public provision countries childcare tends to be more affordable, accessible and of higher quality than in private provision countries. As has been already said, the key challenge is our system which is market driven and the challenges of Covid. Once again - I made this point earlier in regard to the credit guarantee scheme - it has taken Covid to put the spotlight on childcare and how badly we are doing it.

Let us look to the northern countries that have already been mentioned by my colleagues. The Nordic countries, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, which are considered to have the best systems in the world in regard to early childhood care and education, recognise universal childcare as a social right. We do not do that here. Another piece of research found that childcare services in three public provision countries - this time Iceland, Slovenia and Sweden - were characterised by high service, accessibility, availability, affordability and quality, although there was some variation.

I make my contribution tonight in a country that has 230,000 children living in poverty, one in five children under 18 in families with income below the poverty line and one in four children living in households experiencing deprivation of one or two basic necessities. Let us show leadership.

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