Emer Currie (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome any opportunity to debate childcare. The motion and the response to it are interesting to read through. They show that there has been progress. We have to acknowledge the national childcare scheme. The numbers show we are moving from being the highest in Europe. We are beginning to address that and we are on a journey. We are also lifting more children out of poverty through it. The core funding is a very important pillar in that as it gives stability to parents around fees and freezing the fees. Progress has been made with the employment regulation order. Of course, this is a journey and I do not think any of us would say we are where we want to be. There is an impatience about where we are with childcare and the cost of childcare. It is about accessible and affordable childcare.

The budget is great and getting up to 25% off fees is great too. In Dublin West, the issues that come up are as much about accessibility and not being able to secure baby rooms in the community. It is putting people and women off coming back to work, or they have to drive ridiculous journeys to access a crèche. These things add up over time. I do not think any woman who sets out to do well in her career envisages these barriers to employment. Sometimes it just becomes too much between the cost, the extra travelling and the juggle. We need a vision for what the alternative looks like or what we are moving towards. I would like to see more capital investment opportunities for crèches. I believe in the community crèche model. It is a successful model. It has its issues but with political will, it can be the template. It is a format we can develop so we can open not-for-profit crèche in our communities that are highly subsidised. That will bring us on a journey towards what can be a public system.

I was in Iceland on that trip with Senator Hoey. I believe it is the right of a child to have an education that is appropriate to their age from a certain age. Having that support from a certain age as a given has transformed Iceland's society and economy. It also levels the playing field between men and women with regard to opportunities and the gender pay gap. It starts with shared parental leave as one pillar but the expectation is that the system will support families and children. It is the right of the child to spend as much time with, and be raised as much by, their father or the second parent as the first and it is the right of any parent to have access to affordable and accessible childcare. It is commonplace enough around Europe. I am thinking of France, Iceland and Finland, where there are day parents to close the gap until the child starts in a community crèche at 18 months or two years. In some countries, such as Australia for instance, it might even be older.

We seem to have moved entirely into a system where crèches are the only environment where there are subsidies. We are not looking closely enough at childminding and day parents, as they are called, which works in other countries. We are registering childminders, and they get up to €15,000 tax-free in Ireland, but we should be giving more to make those environments what we want them to be and formalising that system of day parents. That is a model that can help us through the baby rooms and the smaller ages. It would bridge the gap before we get into expanding the community crèche model, which can ultimately bring us to a public service and a dependable, education-first childcare system, centred on the rights of the child, that we can all rely on.