Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to speak for the Labour Party to support this motion and to have the opportunity to discuss this important issue. I have just come, as has Deputy Funchion, from the hearings of the committee on children, where we heard from a number of witnesses about childcare and issues facing workers in the early years sector. We heard from representatives of SIPTU and its Big Start campaign, and about how changes in the funding structures under the national childcare scheme has had an impact on after-school services. We were glad to hear from representatives from the Dublin 8 After School Alliance and Urlingford Community Childcare. One thing that all speakers had in common was that they all referred to childcare as being in a crisis situation. They all said that, through our lack of proper coherent vision for childcare, we are currently failing parents, staff, providers and, of course, children too. They said we are failing because we are not providing an equal service to all children, adequate rates of pay for professionals working in the sector, and, indeed, security for the provider.

As other Members have said, we know parents face enormous costs in childcare. In my constituency of Dublin Bay South, high rates of fees are the norm. Approximately €1,000 a month is the norm for child and that is really difficult for parents to pay, as anyone can appreciate. We have heard witnesses say that Irish childcare policy for too long has been characterised by creative ways of stretching inadequate funding further. We heard there is a real danger that we will build on the current piecemeal provision. One representative from SIPTU described the occurrence of the financialisation of childcare and it struck me that we do not want our childcare system becoming financialised and commercialised in the same way we have seen happen in housing, with housing provision dominated by a number of big investors. There is a real risk in childcare, where there is a reliance on the private sector and piecemeal provision, that it will become financialised to the same extent and then it will cease to be seen as a public service. That is a real concern where we have a system held together by subsidies to private providers, where parents can barely afford fees and where there are such low rates of pay in the sector. We have the second highest OECD household childcare costs with couples spending an average of 24% of income, and single parents spending as much as 29%, on childcare costs. We know this has an impact on women, in particular. In Ireland, we have the lowest rate of participation of mothers in the workforce within the EU.

We need to move to a different system of childcare in Ireland. On Saturday, I was pleased to launch with Labour Women a childcare policy calling for equal early years and a universal public childcare system based on three key criteria, namely, equality for children to ensure that each child in Ireland is guaranteed a place in early-years education and childcare; affordability for families whereby we move to a system with investment to ensure parents find crèches and childcare affordable; and fairness for professionals. The Big Start campaign has made it clear that early-years educators need to be paid a living wage. We very much welcome initiatives like the joint labour committee, but not enough is being done. I have received testimonials from SIPTU, from early-years educators. One described themselves as a single parent of two teenagers. They state:

The low pay in my job has left me wondering how much longer I can stay in this sector. I am working for €10.20 per hour, 25 hours per week. I have just finished level 6 childcare and wondering now why did I bother.

Rightly, we introduced higher levels of qualification requirements in the sector but we have not introduced higher levels of pay commensurate with those professional requirements.

We must change that aspect. It is a crucial change addressed in this motion and one that we are also addressing in our policy in this regard.

On a broader level, we need to move to what I have described elsewhere as a Donogh O'Malley moment. Just as when in 1966, some 55 years ago now, Donogh O'Malley, the then Minister for Education, introduced free secondary places for all children, we must now move to see early years education and childcare as a right for each child. We must move to a position where we can guarantee each child a place in early years education. I looked again at the visionary speech given in 1966 by Donogh O'Malley wherein he stated, "We will be judged by future generations on what we did for the children of our time". We will be judged for not having made sufficient provision for children of preschool age and for children of school age in respect of after-school childcare and support.

We are again out of step in this regard. If we look elsewhere in the EU, there is much bigger spending nationally. Sweden, France, Denmark and Finland all invest more than 1% of GNI, which is the international target set by UNICEF, in the early years education sector. In Ireland, we are investing just 0.3% into the sector and this places us far behind the European average. We will be launching our Labour Party alternative budget tomorrow. It will seek to address the discrepancy relating to our low rate of spending in this regard. We ask that the run-up to this budget will see the Government outline how it will use this opportunity to move Ireland towards a universal public childcare system with a level of spending in keeping with the European norm. We ask the Government to replace the for-profit, market-driven, piecemeal model currently that currently characterises our childcare system with one that is State-led, universal and guarantees each child a place. We need a Donogh O'Malley moment or a National Health Service, NHS, moment in order to ensure that we move towards such a model and away from the existing type of provision in this area.

Unfortunately, some Government innovations have had unforeseen consequences. This predates the Minister's time in office. I refer to the national childcare scheme introduced in 2019. We had powerful testimony concerning this scheme from witnesses who appeared before a meeting of the Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. That meeting was chaired by Deputy Funchion. We heard that some of the unforeseen consequences of the scheme have been a move to a work activation model from a child-centred model and from enrolment to hourly rates as the basis for funding. Serious consequences have resulted for community childcare providers and for children in those services. There is a real concern that equality of access is being hampered in that way. My colleague, Senator Marie Sherlock, took the lead on this issue and instigated the event held outside Leinster House earlier. I acknowledge that the Minister met with the community childcare providers. That was welcome.

This issue is fixable. The providers that we spoke with at the committee meeting this afternoon asked all the members of that committee to ensure that this issue is fixed and that targeted interventions are reintroduced, if necessary, to ensure that children from particularly disadvantaged backgrounds are not adversely impacted by the changes to the national childcare scheme. Those consequences seem to have been somewhat unanticipated or unforeseen outcomes of the change to the funding model. The Minister addressed this aspect to some extent when he stated that the Government is moving to a new funding model. This is urgently required because we heard the community childcare providers saying that it is simply not sustainable to continue with the current model.

We in the Labour party are supporting this motion because we believe in the need for a radical revision of childcare services and a move to a State-led, public and universal system. We must move towards such a system in other areas of care because we believe that there should be a continuum of care. As the term "NHS moment" suggests, there should be a continuum of care and we should have supports in place for all those who need them from the cradle to the grave.

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