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

I am afraid that in my experience, and a lot of Deputies have spoken about it in different ways tonight, the mishmash of services we have are not keeping sufficiently on top of the demand for childcare. A lot of providers are feeling pretty desperate about the sort of administration challenges they face. The reason I asked the question about the provision of a national publicly-funded and publicly-run childcare system is that Ireland is particularly low in terms of its overall spending on childcare. Out of the 38 OECD countries Ireland is number 35 in terms of the amount we spend on childcare, at 0.4% of GDP, while Iceland, Sweden, Norway and France spend nearly three times as much as do other countries. Parents struggle to find places and it is not getting easier for them. When the Minister states there is an increase in capacity of 3%, does that include the closure of so many small providers that existed in communities such as Ballyfermot and Inchicore? Loads of the small providers around the country have been closing, yet the big multiple providers are increasing their capacity.

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