Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I still maintain that there are 12,000 places in respect of which providers have not signed up. I suspect that they are probably, in the main, the more commercial and bigger childcare providers. That information is not in the answer, so I cannot elaborate on it. We are still left, though, and this is the problem, with a dysfunctional, fragmented and piecemeal approach to childcare. The Minister is doing better than anyone has done before, but we are being left open to the consequences of the fact that we spend less on childcare services in this State than in any other EU member country. The provision of childcare services here is fragmented and privatised, in the main, and it is a very difficult system to manage. I maintain, therefore, that what we need to do is to fund parents in circumstances where providers are not accepting the provisions that the Minister has allowed for and encouraged them to take up in the context of this scheme. The parents are being left high and dry in that type of situation. In the long term, what is needed is a national early learning and childcare scheme. We would not put up with this fragmented, privatised and dysfunctional system for our national or secondary schools. Somehow, though, we are putting up with it, forever now, in respect of early learning and childcare. This is the real political problem here.

See this speech in context