Lisa McDonald (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the opportunity to make a statement on this important matter. Child care has become one of the most symbolic issues in modern Irish society. It is worth noting that this Government and its two predecessors built a formal child care structure from scratch. We now have a fantastic and evolving professional structure. The workers in this sector deserve to be consulted at all times on all child care matters. More than 35,000 new child care places have been created since 2000. Some €500 million was allocated to this sector between 2000 and 2006, under the equal opportunities child care programme. More than 3,300 grants were allocated to a mixture of community and private providers. However, Pobal should be criticised for the manner in which it has impeded progress in this area. Child care places could be provided far more rapidly if Pobal's administrative problems could be resolved.

The child care subvention scheme is part of the national child care investment programme, which succeeded the equal opportunities child care programme. A budget of €575 million has been made available for the national child care investment programme over the next three years. The programme aims to provide 50,000 additional child care places, with a greater focus on pre-school places for children aged three and four. By 2010, the Government will have spent more than €1 billion of public money on the child care sector. We should ensure these funds are not wasted, however.

I have some real concerns about the new scheme. We need to examine the changes which need to be made in respect of low-income parents who depend on community child care facilities to enable them to access work. Some of the parents who have raised their concerns with me have also said they benefited enormously in the past five or six years from the availability of valuable community child care centres. Child care places which are based in community centres are accessible and do not cost very much. They facilitate people who would not otherwise be able to enter employment. It is good for children to be able to avail of this form of child care. Many parents feel the proposed changes under the new scheme will freeze them out. They suggest that as they are unable to avail of prohibitively expensive private child care, their only option is to become welfare-dependent again. We should acknowledge that many of these parents do valuable work in the community.

Child care facilities were originally intended to allow people to return to education and work. The proposed new scheme could represent a backward step in that regard. I noted Senator O'Toole's comments during last week's debate, when he said that child care is regarded almost exclusively as a woman's issue. He argued that if more men took an interest in it, we would go a long way towards tackling the problem.