Erin McGreehan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is very welcome to the House. It is great to have him here. He attended a meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth earlier today. I listened to the proceedings. The Minister made a strong contribution on the Ukrainian crisis and I thank him for that.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on childcare. We have to recognise the significant lived difficulties families are facing as a result of the lack of childcare and its significant cost. The availability and cost of childcare is one of the biggest barriers to women going back to work after having children. The ECCE scheme has been a great success. The extension of the age criteria has been wonderful. It is of such benefit to families to have that. I would not have put my children into a preschool if it was not free to do so. I was not working at the time, so it just would not have happened. I refer to my personal experience. When I wanted to go back to work after having children, it was not for me. I could not afford it. Why would I disrupt my family life by pulling my children out of bed at crazy hours and commuting to a job? It would be living to work to pay someone else. That did not make sense for me. I was better off having no independence and no money of my own, but autonomy over my time and my children. We cut our cloth and made things work. That was my only option.

It is not easy being a working mother either. My youngest son is sick at the moment and when I was leaving my house this morning he was pleading me not to go to work. He said, "Dublin is closed today, mammy. I hate Dublin. Dublin does not need my mammy; I need my mammy." It is so hard to leave your wee person behind. No option is easy but we need to have options. The option I chose meant that I felt that guilt as I walked out the door and left the Cooley Mountains. The irony is that I could not afford to go to work and I almost could not afford not to work. It is a difficult one.

The State does not have a good record of paying due care to the caring economy. I am glad there is more of a conscious bias towards this and a new focus on the importance of that care, as well as a realisation of the significant value and worth of the care that is provided. I ask that the Department carry out research into identifying the percentage of GDP that is facilitated by the caring economy. For example, what percentage of it is facilitated by grandparents who provide childcare? They facilitate entrepreneurs and businesses and that leads to the generation of income tax. We do not currently have those data.

Overall, I congratulate the Minister on his work in respect of childcare. We came into this Government with a focus on seeing what can be done with childcare.I refer to getting stuck in to radically transform childcare. We have started on that pathway. We really have done so. The Minister has the support of Fianna Fáil in pushing this process so far down this path that it will not be possible to go back. This is the way forward. I refer to having core funding and to constantly increasing this core funding in every budget. We must ensure we are moving towards the public provision of childcare, which we need. We must put in the foundations for fair, public, accessible childcare in the communities in which people live and wish to be in.

All childcare providers would say the support provided during the pandemic was incredible and that they would not exist now without it. They would not have been able to keep providing services and to keep their lives going. This is what we need. We have seen what the Government can do and how best to do so. I refer to more than 90% of expressions of interest being in favour of moving towards such a core funding model. The provision of those pandemic supports has caused these providers to realise this is a good thing and that the Government is on their side and wants them to provide a good service. They want to get on board because they know the Government is not out to get them, but instead wants to work with them. This is a testament to the work of the Department and of the childcare providers in endeavouring to create this path forward. To see this, we only have to look at budget 2022 and the core funding scheme, which allocated more than €221 million to this area. It is a colossal amount. Of that, €173 million is new investment. That must be some sort of record for investment in any social service or provision.

There are a few layers to this childcare cake. We must ensure we have all the ingredients together to enable us to make progress in going down this path and to ensure we have the proper childcare provision that we want. We must encourage new childcare providers to enter this sector. There is a great need for growth in the number of providers in this market because there simply are not enough places available. We now have an opportunity in this regard. The census has been done and data are coming on where we are at, what we need and who we need, as well as where we need these elements, in the context of the provision of these services. We must ensure costs are reduced dramatically. Again, this is not a secret. We all know this is necessary and that the Minister is working on it.

We must also reimagine the childcare sector. It is early education and the people working in the sector are professionals. It is not babysitting. These are qualified people. It is incredible what they have done for my children and the benefits they have derived from these services. I could speak all day on the topic of childcare. So many positive things are going on. The Minister has our full support in creating this public childcare system, which we all want and need. I refer to there being better pay and conditions for the staff. We must look after our children and the staff. A healthy childcare service is a healthy child.