Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I apologise in advance to the Minister that I will not be here to hear his contribution. However, having seen the Government amendment, I am disappointed because Deputy Funchion has provided a route that will ensure we can deliver affordable childcare. This is crucially important in a State in which many families are already facing a cost-of-living crisis and we are dealing with the highest mortgage rates in the eurozone and possibly the highest rents in the western world. We couple that with the experience of many families who either decide not to have the children they would desperately love to have, as has happened in some instances of which I am aware, or remove themselves from the workforce because of the cost of childcare. That is another crisis to add to the list of crises over which the Government is presiding.

In many areas of the cost-of-living crisis, the Government can say there is nothing it can do. It says there is nothing it can do about high insurance costs, the cost of sending children to school or transport costs, which it says have to increase due to our global climate obligations. It says it cannot build houses overnight. Deputy Funchion has provided a route through which we can tackle the costs of childcare overnight. All it takes is the political will and the investment. Next week will provide a huge litmus test for the Government because we will either see another budget that fails to address childcare at all, as was the case last year, or we will see a start to the Government beginning to recognise the emerging crisis and how we can deal with it. Dealing with that crisis must be about ensuring families see the net result in that the week after the budget, their childcare costs will start to come down. We need to bring them down to approximately one third of their current rate.

When our children go into childcare settings, they are cared for by some of the most professional individuals one could meet. They work in our childcare services, one of the few sectors in which those who operate it continue their education and development. They continue to learn and ensure the care they provide is world class and yet, they come home at the end of the week on a pittance in comparison to other people who have equivalent educational levels. All that needs to change. My appeal to the Minister is to read the proposals with which Deputy Funchion and Sinn Féin have provided him and, more importantly, to start to implement them.

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