I thank Deputy Kerrane and Sinn Féin for bringing forward this motion. The Minister will be well aware that every TD in this House knows that parents are struggling with childcare. In my constituency of Cork North-Central, I meet these parents regularly. They are doing everything right. They are working hard. They are raising their families. They are trying to get on with life, but they are being let down by a childcare system that simply is not working. This is about far more than the cost of childcare. It is about a shortage of places, a workforce crisis and a failure to treat early years education as the essential public service that it is. Yes, fees have fallen for some families and that is welcome, but what good is affordable childcare if there is no place available? Parents need affordability and availability. Providers need certainty and early years educators deserve decent pay, secure careers and recognition for the skilled professionals that they are. For too long Governments have relied on schemes and subsidies to prop up a system that remains fundamentally broken. We need to stop asking families to navigate a patchwork of supports and start building a childcare system that they can rely on. The Labour Party believes that childcare is not a luxury, nor is it simply a support for parents. It is an investment in our children, families, economy and future. That means expanding capacity, creating thousands of new childcare places, reducing costs for families and properly valuing the people who educate and care for our youngest children because every child deserves the best possible start in life regardless of their postcode or their parents' income. We have long accepted that access to primary and secondary education is a public good. It is time that we recognise that high-quality early years education is too. The question that I pose for the Government is no longer whether we can afford to build a universal public childcare system, but whether we can afford another generation of children and families being failed by the one we have.

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