Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Ms Elaine Dunne of the Federation of Early Childhood providers to the Visitors' Gallery. She has done Trojan work over the years to strengthen providers' ability to function within the sector and strengthening the services that are delivered to children and workers as well.

The day the Minister was nominated to his role, I congratulated him and welcomed him to the post. I did warn him then that it was important for him to drive the Department rather than be a passenger there. Departments are notorious for running Ministers rather than Ministers running Departments. No doubt it is more difficult for a first-time Deputy.

What is happening here raises massive questions. There are several key stakeholders in the sector. First and most important are the children themselves. The system needs to be built around the child. The fact this is not in the bailiwick of the Department of Education shows that the child is not at the heart of this process as they should be. The next most important stakeholders are the parents. Parents in this country are getting hammered. That is because Irish Governments are outliers in terms of the level of support they provide to this sector.

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Parents are getting squeezed by the equivalent of new mortgages just so they can get care for their child. This has enormous consequences. One such consequence is many people not having children because they feel they cannot do so. Another is that many parents, mostly mothers, not entering the workforce when they want to. That is happening simply because the Government will not fund the system properly. That is the bottom line. That is the fact of the situation. Parents are not the only group being squeezed right now. Workers are being squeezed, as are providers.

The funding proposal the Department and the Minister have come up with is a monster. It is a Frankenstein. It is a system that makes no logical sense. It tries to mash together the public and the private in the most cumbersome fashion. It tries to put controls on the income providers can achieve but does not do anything about the cost base providers must deal with. Of course, if the cost base changes, providers have no option but to change their income base to allow for that. It also has the effect of putting downward pressure on wages. That means well-educated, hard-working childcare staff are simply not being paid to do the work they are doing in this State. It never ceases to amaze me that the people we pay to care for our children and our older people get paid buttons. It shows what kind of country we are when the people we are in charge of and who we are meant to be protecting and caring for are not on proper salaries for the work they do.

The Government has created a ticking time bomb for the providers in the childcare sector. Parliamentary questions I have put to the Minister's Department show 789 childcare providers have closed their doors since 2017. These were predominantly ECCE services and small providers. Parents and providers are at the end of their tethers trying to get proper funding for this sector. The new core funding proposals were meant to build upon the limited stability the EWSS brought about during the pandemic. We were waiting months for these new proposals and when they finally came they brought nothing but despair to many in the sector. Since the new proposals were announced 21 providers have announced they will close their doors. In the last two weeks, two providers in Waterford closed their doors. This system is closing childcare. How is that the objective of the State? When you have closed childcare, parents and children must go further to seek the service they need. They need to wait longer on waiting lists for places. They need to drive longer first thing in the morning to and from the childcare provider and work so they can manage to get their child in. This is obviously bad for providers but it is bad for parents and children as well. It is the opposite of what we should be achieving. It is amazing to me that a much simpler system the Government could have come up with was to simply increase the level of funding to the system. It could have done that through an increased childcare payment or through a tax break. More money could be given to parents to pay for the system they are getting, thus leaving the choice with parents and allowing the system function as it should.

The other problem I have is this whole system is weighted towards the bigger chains. It suits the bigger chains and is better for them financially. It makes the smaller providers unviable and that is the big problem. I, therefore, ask the Minister to go back to the drawing board. He should bring in all the stakeholders, including representatives of the providers, children and parents and ensure we have a functioning sector that does right by the children but also pays a decent wage and ensures providers can earn a decent profit. If that does not happen more will close.

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