Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

That is no problem. I did not hear the Minister of State say that. I generally feel that what we are seeing in our childcare and nursing home sectors are the same old repeated failures of this Government and successive governments under Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, with the PDs wagging the tail of the dog a few decades ago with their neoliberal agenda of privatisation of our public services, mismanagement and bad planning, failure to engage with the stakeholders that matter and a determination to put big businesses' ability to turn a profit at the heart of every policy and decision.

We have a childcare sector that is losing an average of 100 providers a year and a nursing home sector that needs 11,000 more beds by 2031 but is facing what providers have called a tidal wave leaving our fair deal scheme. There are more and more closures while both sectors experience growing demand. This will only get worse. We have a funding model that ignores the reality of the world around us. As has been said, studies by the ESRI show that spending on the fair deal scheme as a proportion of overall health expenditure has declined over the past decade. We know that small and medium providers in both the childcare and nursing home sectors are being priced out of the market, unable to compete with the big international providers that can absorb the cost of inadequate core funding and extra regulations.

Further than that, there is the inadequacy of core funding. Funding has failed to keep up with inflation. The cost-of-living and inflation crises have put severe pressure on everyone, and yet in most cases core funding has not been increased to reflect that need. It is not rocket science to know that when costs go up and funding remains the same, then you get problems. This goes across the board, from funding to wages, pensions and social welfare. If payments do not keep up with inflation, then ordinary people lose out.

There has also been a clear failure to engage with the stakeholders who matter, particularly with regard to the childcare sector. I have received numerous emails from small, at-home childcare providers noting that there has been a clear lack of engagement on the new childminding regulations. Here is a quote from a submission that an at-home childminder made on the new draft regulations. She said:

It is extremely frustrating to be asked to consult on a document where we have put zero input. To be asked now, as the regulations have been decided for us and then be told that we are only allowed to consult on certain aspects, is insulting. Many of us are working in this field for over a decade and many for longer, yet the experience that we can bring to establishing a regulated service in childminding has largely been ignored. We have a wealth of experience out there, both in terms of childminding and of running small childcare businesses, and yet the Government decides to plough ahead without consultation. No wonder there are so many closures of small and medium providers when the Government is not including them in planning or the regulatory process. The result of all this is that you are pushing out small and medium providers. This is largely to gain large private providers, often new entrants to the Irish market, often owned by international investment companies who are making profit hand over fist. For nursing homes, we now have 30% of the market run by independent providers, often family-run or small-scale providers. In childcare, the vast majority of the 100 closures we are seeing every year are small and medium-sized services.

This really is the same old story from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The profits of the wealthy at the expense of everybody else. The difference now is that it is really starting to bite for small and medium businesses as well as for ordinary people. We need to stop providing services, which should be public anyway, by allowing a big business to run wild, making profits at the expense of quality of service and at a cost to the average person.

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