Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The commitment the Government made was to reduce the cost of childcare for families by 50%. We have gone halfway there this year. We will decide on budget day how much further we can go for 2024. We will go as far as we possibly can but, as Deputy Bacik rightly pointed out, when it comes to childcare and early years education, there are many demands and needs for additional resources to bring down fees for parents, to create more spaces and make them more available, to do things that are targeted at lone and disadvantaged parents in particular and to improve quality and pay. We have to look at all four of those and decide what the best way to use resources is.

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