Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This Government made a promise to tackle the cost of childcare, and we will do that. In doing so, however, we must ensure there is an early childhood care and education, ECCE, sector there to provide the service. If the current core funding model was fit for purpose, we would not have had a situation where hundreds of our early educators and childcare providers descended on Leinster House last week to express their dissatisfaction with the new model outside the gates. It is going to impact, in particular, on those smaller ECCE operators that, in many instances, are in rural constituencies like mine. It is wrong that these childcare providers have to go on social welfare during the summer months. I ask that the core funding model be amended and that we invest in these ECCE providers so we can keep them open and save them.

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