Mary O'Rourke (Fianna Fail)

I have every reason to believe the Government is developing its thoughts on child care and there could yet be some measures in the Finance Bill. I do not know that for certain. I am only guessing. This is an important issue for people aged between 25 and 40 years and it is certainly prohibiting them from having any more children. If they have one child at school and two in a crèche, there is still all the time after school. School ends at 2 p.m. and a regime of child-minding must be put into action.

I thank the Minister of State for being here. I particularly applaud the budget. It makes very fine provision for disability, for those who are really at the edge. When one thinks about that and then about the difficulties of child care, people can scrimp and save and somehow provide for it, but they cannot do anything about it if there is a disabled person in their household. Something had to be done about that and the Government has now put in place a definite programme of action.