Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

People are profoundly disappointed with the choices made by the Government in the budget. They are disappointed because the Minister chose to fail in his responsibility to assist them in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis that persists unabated. This is starkly true in the case of childcare, in which what he has brought forward is entirely inadequate. Families have been let down. So too have their children, whose futures lie in our hands. Last September, Sinn Féin published a comprehensive and fully costed plan to introduce childcare capped at €10 a day for all starting in September 2025. I welcome that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael lifted this policy from Sinn Féin in advance of the general election. It is just disappointing that they were not willing to take our plan and implement it too, because while Fine Gael said it needed 100 days to come up with a plan, nearly a year on, we have seen nothing of the sort. I have not seen the structural reforms or level of investment needed from a Fianna Fáil Minister.

The first five years of children's lives are imperative to their physical, mental and emotional development. The benefits of early education last well into adulthood. Not only is it important that we make formative care affordable but also of high quality. We need to provide it universally to every child across the country. This year's budget opens just 2,300 spaces in childcare. There are 50,000 children on waiting lists. At the pace at which the Government is delivering reforms, it will take it more than two decades to address the backlog alone and, in fact, it will not even deliver that, because its plan to tackle these 2,300 places and schools and community centres is utter madness. We have schools waiting for decades for new builds. How long will it take? Leaving those children on waiting lists is careless and irresponsible.

Their minds are developing now. It is the Government's responsibility to provide them with the best conditions possible and it is failing to do so.

Childcare does not have to be in a state of seemingly perpetual crisis. That is simply the environment the Government has fostered through slow reform and inadequate investment. Sinn Féin would have invested €127.2 million in current expenditure and €20 million in capital expenditure in order to deliver childcare capped at €10 a day, meaningful expansion, affordable, high-quality childcare and early years education for every child possible. Sinn Féin's spokesperson on children Claire Kerrane, has shown the Government how this could be done. Somehow, I had hoped that the Minister would have learned from his own education that it is not enough to cog answers and hope the details take care of themselves. The Government needs to take the workings too if it wants to see results. Families and children deserve better. The Government is continuing to fail them. It needs to do more and it needs to do better.

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