Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

Does the Minister agree that the current system is broken and the privatised model which depends on inadequate public funding does not work from the points of view of childcare workers, parents or many small providers?

TASC produced a report last week which concluded that the single most important factor in knowing the pay and conditions of care work is the extent to which it is marketised and that for care work to be well paid, it needs to be publicly resourced and its wages set above what would be fetched in the market. That finding is particularly relevant now. There is no question but that childcare workers are very much on the front line. The positivity rates for Covid are twice as high in the childcare sector as in education for a range of different reasons. Does the Minister agree that, fundamentally, the privatised system is broken and we need a national childcare service, that is, State public provision of childcare that, I would argue, is free at the point of use and paid for through progressive taxation?

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