Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

We are currently providing a €638 million investment in childcare. With that money, we have three core aims, which are affordability for parents; quality for the children in these services, which means ensuring that childcare professionals are well paid so that they continue to enhance and grow the care they are providing; and keeping services sustainable. When we see the amount of money we are providing and we see the dissatisfaction from parents, which the Deputies both spoke about, and when we hear the concerns about providers and the concerns of childcare professionals, we are not delivering on those objectives. That is why I am doing this research. Sometimes people roll their eyes at another piece of research. We have acted in an ad hocmanner on childcare up until this point and we need some firm research on which to base the decisions we make in the next and subsequent budgets about where the extra money goes and how we can deliver on those three objectives.

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