Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 2:

"To insert the following lines after 'calls on the Government to':

- 'immediately end the use of zero-hours contracts in all sectors;

- take immediate steps to address the cost of childcare, which is crippling young families;'."

I believe in offering credit where credit is due and I fully acknowledge the work the Government has done. I am not here to criticise in any way the work that is being done by the Government. Without doubt, coming from where we were, the Government has achieved a lot.

However, we have achieved a lot on the backs of workers in the private and public sectors. Through no fault of the Minister or Government, the type of employment that is being created is unstable and uncertain and lacks any sort of commitment from the employer to the employees. In particular, I am talking about the zero-hours contract which has become the scourge of employment. Even in the public sector, nurses and teachers and lecturers in institutes of technology are being employed on zero-hours contracts, which is simply not good enough. It is not real employment. I know the Minister is bringing forward more Bills in the not too distant future and I sincerely hope he will address that issue.

Having recently become a grandfather, I have become acutely aware of the cost of child care. Any thriving economy must find a way to meet the costs of child care for those who wish to avail of work. The Social Welfare (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2015 was debated here a couple of days ago. One of the issues concerned getting people back to work. I do not know how anybody expects someone to go back to work on low wages when one looks at child care costs running at between €1,000 and €1,500 per month. As the economy improves, it falls on the State to start providing decent child care facilities for those who wish to work. If we were really doing our work right, there would be a crèche beside every national school. I know that where education and training boards have provided crèches for adults going back to college, they have been a tremendous success. Unfortunately, the last Government cut the funding for those crèches. I think the Minister has an opportunity to do something here, so I call on him to do that. I do not have an awful lot more to say. I am not in any way disputing anything that has been said by the Government side other than to add those two points to it.