Northside opposition TDs have said that more needs to be done to reduce childcare costs.
Last week, the Dáil heard a Sinn Féin motion which called on the government to reduce childcare costs for families, with research from the party showing that average childcare costs are more than €800 a month across Ireland.
During the 2024 general election campaign, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael both campaigned on reducing childcare costs for parents, pledging to reduce costs to just €200 per month.
The manifesto pledges have failed to materialise, as election promises rarely do, and local TDs have wasted no time hitting the government on the issue.
Dublin Bay North TD Denise Mitchell said “in my own constituency, we have a lot of new housing estates with young families and the waiting list for childcare places is simply huge.”
The Sinn Féin TD said, “the fact is that waiting lists are stopping many people from returning to work.”
“The cost for those who manage to secure a place is still way too high,” she said.
“While I welcome the progress that has been made in this area, the reality is that parents are still paying the equivalent of a second mortgage every month,” Mitchell noted.
“When it comes to capacity, if it does not have the staff, the government cannot deliver the places in the system. Therefore, we need to ask why is staff turnover so high and why recruitment is so difficult”
Mitchell cited a report from SIPTU, which found that 86% of early years educators identified low pay as their biggest issue, and two-thirds also raised the problem of extra pressure due to staff shortages and stress.
“If we really want to deliver a public childcare system, we need to grasp the nettle here and begin examining where the state could take responsibility for wages and associated costs in the sector,” she said.
“Investing in our young people and their education from an early age benefits society as a whole. We can get this right, but affordability, accessibility and workforce issues need to be addressed to make sure we do.”
Labour TD Robert O’Donoghue said that he broadly supported Sinn Féin’s motion, but it didn’t go far enough.
“We are skirting around the fundamental issue that is wrong with the early years sector,” the Dublin Fingal West TD said.
“The truth is that this sector will never be properly fixed as long as we continue to rely on a private provision model.”
In defence of the private model, Minister of State Emer Higgins noted that €1.6 billion has been spent, but O’Donoghue said the principle of spending that much on private services didn’t sit right with him.
“To the public, that seems like a great commitment, but the reality is that this investment has also opened doors to corporate chains and private corporations,” the Labour TD warned.
Identifying a fix, O’Donoghue said, “a public system would allow the state to build capacity while protecting the small and medium providers that are the backbone of the sector and communities across the country.”
He said that the childcare sector is not a “private luxury,” but rather, it is “infrastructure.”
“Childcare underpins the economy. It is a cost-of-living issue. It enables children and families to thrive. It is a women’s equality issue,” he said.
O’Donoghue said, “the early years sector is fixable if the political will is there to do it.”
“Unlike other major infrastructure, this does not have to take decades, nor does it have to cost a fortune. If we get it right, this benefits everybody. Early childhood education and care is a public good, and we need to start treating it as such.