I thank Sinn Féin and Deputy Kerrane for bringing this important motion forward. For my generation and for young parents like me, or youngish parents anyway, childcare and housing are the crucial issues. Childcare and housing are both issues of accessibility and affordability. Both are also issues that have been left to the private sector for far too long and, in both cases, there is an urgent need for strong, direct State intervention. In this House last week, I raised issues with the Tánaiste regarding a local childcare provider in Knocklyon. Recently there has been a large number of last-minute room closures. Previous flexibility under a different ownership with summer hours or part-time after-school has disappeared, and parents have been left stranded with no childcare and no notice. Parents have had to take up to 20 annual leave days across May and June to cover room closures. They are scrambling to get family or friends to help to find and pay childminders, and it is all unbelievably stressful. The next big fear, of course, is that the childcare provider will pull out of core funding and hike its prices, leaving these parents unprotected by the very welcome fee freeze announced earlier this month. Parents have no option to move elsewhere as childcare places in Dublin South-West are so scarce. Parents are excluded from Government childcare supports and have to somehow suck up the additional fees which can double overnight, as the Minister knows, or otherwise parents, and it is mainly mums, just stop working. This is all due to the for-profit, commercialised model that this Government has promoted. We in the Labour Party have an ambitious, costed and revolutionary plan for State-provided, universal childcare in Ireland, where we treat it just like primary education, spaces are guaranteed for children, parents have certainty over costs and accessibility, and early years educators have decent terms of employment. Let us be clear: there is no issue with quality in the current system, but we have early years educators who go over and above every day only to be forced to sign on during the summer and we need to properly value these essential workers.

Sentiment score: 0.09