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

I thank the Deputy. I hope that when this period is looked back on there will be what might yet be seen as a number of Donogh O'Malley moments. What we have done, particularly as regard to employment rights, such as the move to a living wage, is hugely significant. There is the introduction of statutory sick pay and all the different forms of parental leave, which did not exist before, as well as the national pension plan legislation the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Humphreys, will bring in this year to make sure every worker has an occupational pension on top of his or her State pension. These are big changes, these are big reforms, and the extent of them will be seen more so in the future than they are currently.

The other area that has been really significant under this Government, building on the work of the previous one, is affordable healthcare. For the first time, more than half the country is entitled to see their GP without having to pay fees. Hospital charges have been abolished for public patients and the cost of medicines has been considerably reduced. That is enormous progress in only a short space of years.

When it comes to childcare, the Government has expanded preschool provision and the early childhood care and education, ECCE, programme very considerably. By next September, we will have reduced childcare fees by 50%. That is a very significant reduction in fees and that will really help a lot of families to pay the bills. That also has huge societal benefits, including benefits for children in getting early education and in their development and, of course, economic benefits in allowing parents to re-enter the workforce much sooner than they would otherwise be able to do so, were it not for that.

As for the next steps beyond that, they will be for the next budget, as the Deputy rightly pointed out. The fact the Government will have reduced childcare fees by half by next September is very significant progress and we particularly want to move into other areas such as the access and inclusion model, AIM, for example, for children with disabilities and so on so they can get access to healthcare and early education too.

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