Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North-Central, Fianna Fail)

I raise the issue of childcare with the Taoiseach as well. Mary Geary's Childcare is one of the largest providers in the country. It is actually based in Carrigtohill, which is in Deputy O'Connor's constituency, but many of the families who use it reside in my constituency. It has 450 children from 300 families. The parents of those children were recently faced with a fee hike of 34%. This is because the provider decided to remove itself from the public core funding model. It did this reluctantly because there is a situation where some of these large providers are capped at a certain level, which I think is in the region of €750,000, which they cannot go over. This is an example of a large provider but the pressure that is put on us locally in terms of families trying to source alternative childcare is enormous and has been felt deeply.

A survey carried out online recently by Indeed, the hiring company, where 1,000 parents were surveyed with 70% saying that childcare accessibility has affected their ability to work and one quarter of all respondents finding they either had to cut their hours or rearrange their work schedule to accommodate the childcare gap. This is now more than a family issue; this is an economic issue.

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