Ivana Bacik (Independent)

It is far too low. Government policy must address the question of parents who are paying for child care in the private sector, yet we have seen nothing in ten years. The subvention scheme targets those who are most disadvantaged but as the Minister of State said, 80% of child care services receive no subvention. It is unacceptable that the Government has no tax break policy to support parents struggling to meet the costs of private child care providers.

The change announced by the Government has caused grave concern for those just above the threshold who feel the Government has effectively introduced through the back door a one-child policy. It has removed the possibility for many parents to contemplate having a second child due to the high cost of child care. In addition, many parents and child care providers have expressed genuine concerns that the effect of this scheme will be to create a segregated or ghettoised system where children of parents on social welfare will remain in community-supported, not-for-profit child care places, while everybody else will have to avail of privately provided facilities. That is simply not good enough for parents who work outside the home.

We have long accepted the principle, rightly, that child benefit is a universal, non-means tested payment payable to all parents whatever their incomes. We must also accept that the needs of all children are universal; they all require high-quality child care if their parents work outside the home. Yet, in ten years there has been no attempt by the Government to develop a universal child care policy that would address the needs of all parents who work outside the home. That is the fundamental problem. This subvention scheme and the change the Government has announced has created particular problems for parents. It has shown us once again that the Government is capable of making U-turns, as it did on provisional licences, when there is an outcry. It now seems there will be a change from the original announcement and that the scheme will allow continued subsidy for working parents on low incomes. The difficulty, however, is, as the Minister of State said in his speech, that we do not yet know what the income threshold or level of subsidy will be. It is simply not good enough that child care providers and particularly parents will be left in this period of uncertainty, unable to plan ahead. Many parents will be considering whether they will be able to have another child and at what age their child can avail of child care, but they cannot plan effectively. They know what their income is, but they do not yet know what the cost of child care in a community facility will be, assuming they can obtain such a place for their children. As we have already heard, there is another enormous problem concerning the shortage of child care places.

In so many other policy areas, as with driving licences and road safety generally, we have seen ill-conceived, badly-planned policies being grandly announced, only to be followed by U-turns, changes and other tweaking. People are then left in great uncertainty without being able to plan ahead. The difficulty with planning may mean the difference between being able to have another child or not, as the mother from Cork has written. It is not good policymaking and it is simply not good enough for parents who work outside the home, nor for children.

The Government should be looking to develop a child care policy that seeks to provide affordable, high quality child care services for the children of all parents working outside the home. The Minister should take responsibility for the Government's failure over ten years to do so and, at the very least, he should apologise to parents who will be affected by this latest change for the uncertainty into which he has cast them.