Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Taoiseach for that response. Notwithstanding that this is a minority-led dispute, as he says, I am sure he will accept that those concerned do in many ways speak for the entirety of the sector, certainly for an awful lot of families, who still experience childcare costs that are too high or who in many instances experience a complete lack of availability of childcare places. Therefore, issues of affordability and capacity still loom large.

I asked the Taoiseach whether he would honour his commitment to reduce childcare fees by a further 25% in this year's budget. I would like a straight answer to that. I also asked the Taoiseach about the pay for childcare professionals. He indicated correctly that there has been some progress made on this, but I put it to him that if he wants to ensure sustainable capacity, radical change needs to happen in terms of the career paths of childcare professionals and their levels of pay. It is not sufficient to say there are now minimum scales and that we have made minimal improvements; you really have to go at this, and there has to be a resource, a pot of money, provided for in the budget for that also.

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