Margaret Cox (Fianna Fail)

It does. Has anybody tried to do all this, then get the children ready, put them into the car and do the drop-off at the crèche? School does not start until 8.50 a.m. but one must be in work at 8.30 a.m. and everybody is going in different directions. It is impossible. What is one like when one gets to work at 9.30 a.m? We should probably not even consider that.

Earlier I alluded to the regulation of crèches and child care committees. The system is not very flexible. When one makes an appeal to a child care committee and speaks to the person in charge, including the inspector, they are reasonable in their response. However, they put the fear of God into the person who runs the crèche and the mothers and fathers who have children there. It is neither fair nor right. That additional worry is not needed. While it is important to ensure children are well looked after, there must be some flexibility. A person who runs a crèche recently said that when a worker is out sick most organisations can get cover for them. However, if one is running a crèche and a worker is out sick, woe betide if that is the day an inspector calls to the premises because there is no way he or she will believe it just happened like that. It is that simple.

Why can we not disregard all income in respect of those who look after children in their own home? The Government introduced a disregard for €6,000 in respect of the rent a room scheme. We are essentially saying it is better to get €6,000 from renting a room than from looking after children. We could immediately create a whole new economy, not a black but a legitimate one, by providing a similar disregard in this area and giving value to the work done by those women at home.

When one gets pregnant, the first date one makes is not with the gynaecologist but with the crèche. The crèche is going to take the baby, so one does the tour of the crèches. I do not know what it is like in Dublin, but I know what it is like in Galway. If one is an employer, female employees will come in devastated and in tears, not because they are unable to come back to work but because they are unable to find a crèche. It is impossible.

The Minister of State is a straight talker and he referred to making comparisons with the situation in Europe. It is a bureaucratic approach to say that a comparative approach will be taken on the question of structures and supports. The Minister of State should forget these and look at what people pay on a daily and weekly basis and compare those instead. That is what we need to address and until we do so we will not deal with the cost of child care.