Brendan Ryan (Labour)

The National Economic and Social Forum described in a policy audit how the Government was guilty of inaction, peripheral implementation and drift in the area of implementing policy on early childhood care and education. It was not the Labour Party, the Independent Group or Fine Gael that pointed this out, but the body set up by the Government to provide an objective view. Many of us are intrigued by how the Government managed to walk itself into the incredible mess in which it finds itself. It blundered into two by-elections and was quite surprised — similar to the surprise Charles Haughey got in 1989 when he discovered people were upset about the health service — to discover that young working families are in a state close to nervous collapse as a result of the struggle to pay high mortgages and the extraordinary cost of child care. The Government managed to sit on the housing price crisis for three or four years, presumably so that some people would get the opportunity to get rich. Therefore, it caused half of the burden and just ignored the other half.

I have listened to the eloquence of the Minister who has been as eloquent as only he can be. Whatever else I might dispute, I do not dispute that he is eloquent. He is a bright, intelligent man, but I am not sure of his attachment to common sense. Nobody would dispute his intellectual equipment. His speech about what he has done was impressive. However, what he has done is just a drop in the ocean. We are talking about the needs of hundreds of thousands of families and children. There may be 250,000 families, including couples and single parents and up to 400,000-plus children in primary education. This estimation assumes something I would challenge, that no child over 15 years needs child care. This was not the case in my house when my children reached 15 and I suspect many here would say the same. This estimation is a conservative figure, therefore, in terms of the required provision of child care.

I could devote my time to what I believe to be the most coherent set of proposals produced on this issue — those of my party which are coherent, costed and workable. It did not take us seven or eight years in government to produce those proposals.