Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will speak briefly to both sectors in question. What they have in common, and the motion speaks very clearly about this, is how when public goods and what should be public services are left to the private sector to the extent that they have been, you limit your levers and influence over them. The Government has many levers and influence over them, but it would be far more preferable to look at these properly as public services once and for all.

That is the direction of travel we need in both of these areas. That will not happen overnight but it should be the direction in which we move.

We had several debates last during the course of the last year on nursing homes, in particular Beaumont. People have concerns over the funding model and that needs to continue to be examined. More strategically, we need to significantly increase the number of beds that are provided through the State system and through the community system for nursing homes. There is a severe shortage there. While it is a somewhat different issue, it is not entirely unrelated to the pressure on our hospital system. Too often people are in hospital longer than they need to be because of a severe lack of step-down beds but in some instances also because of a lack of long-term and respite nursing-home beds. The respite piece is particularly significant.

There are similar challenges with the childcare sector. I have been speaking on this for years. This is having a huge impact on families throughout the country and not just in terms of the cost. Even when money is not an object, which obviously it is in a cost-of-living crisis, for those families who have enough money to pay for it, to be able to find a place anywhere in the country but particularly in the big urban centres in Cork, Dublin, Galway and Limerick - I speak particularly for Cork - it is extremely difficult. God forbid that parents would look for anything beyond the very standard end. Looking for something other than the exact five days or for a place for a child below one year of age is even harder again. Baby rooms are effectively gone. There were many more of them even three or four years ago. However, because of how the funding model is structured, many providers have removed those services, which is making it really difficult for women and parents generally to return to work or to find work. That means parents without a support structure living far away from their families are delaying returning to work which not necessarily what they want to do. It is in some instances, but for many parents that is not what they want to do. They are forced into staying out of work because of economic necessity which is wrong.

Somebody was in contact with me for whom three days a week was what suited them because of their financial and work situation. The provider advised that because of how things are structured administratively and financially, they needed to either provide a space for five days or not at all. This person was left with a choice of trying to find an additional €185 a month or have no childcare. Part of that was because of the structure. All these issues need to be looked but in the longer run we need to be working towards a public service because it is a public good.

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