Dan Boyle (Green Party)

I am a youth and community worker by profession and in the 1980s when I was thinking about progressing along that career path, I sought a professional qualification which would help me to do so. At the time there were not many standard educational qualifications in that area so the course I chose was one in child care at the then Regional Technical College in Cork which is now the Cork Institute of Technology. One of the subjects we had to do as part of that course was child psychology.

The work of a British child psychologist called John Bowlby was quite often quoted in the course. He helped define a theory called "maternal deprivation". It was not a theory for which I had much time. Controversial as it was then, it is even more controversial now. It was along the lines that infants were shown to be more progressive in their cognitive development if brought up by a stay-at-home mother. I had even less respect for that theory when I learned the study had been done in the late 1940s and that it was paid for by the British Government as a way to encourage women to leave the workforce after the Second World War.

I mention this because it is not unlike the situation the Irish economy and society now faces. A number of policy measures have been taken in the past decade to encourage more women into the workforce, some of which were done for progressive reasons. There was an imbalance in the workforce. The quality of work being promoted in the economy lacked a particular skill set which only women could provide. It was very much needed and benefited the economy subsequently.

Some of the policies adopted were to appeal to people's wish for a better livelihood, such as tax individualisation and other incentive measures. We now know that the way they were implemented had a societal impact. Corrective measures have since been taken in respect of those policies.

Alongside that, there was a major policy to put in place a child care infrastructure where none had existed, as was admitted in this debate. A large amount of Exchequer and EU funding went into that. It was always understood that the level of funding required to put in place the capital infrastructure for a child care network would not be followed by current expenditure support. In the current climate in which we now find ourselves the budget which can be allocated for this is less than what it has been. How that is allocated in a socially just way is at the heart of this debate.

A sincere attempt has been made to try to put in place a tiered set of payments which is generally lacking in our social welfare system. The lack of staggered rates of payments in terms of State services has created unnecessary poverty traps in the past. How we pay people in terms of social security and how they can access social services according to need will determine how successful we are as a society in the future. No one in this House has accepted, or would accept, that the set of figures produced in the first instance is a successful way to do that. As Senator Healy-Eames said, the problem is not with those on middle incomes but with the likely effect of the figures which exist on those on lower incomes. The changes which need to be made, which are being considered in debates such as this and the concerns expressed by the child care sector must take into account that people on modest incomes could be cut off and expected to pay an exorbitant amount in terms of increases in chid care costs.