An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-10
============================================================

Alison Comyn (FF), Nominated by the Taoiseach

I was going to extend a bem-vindo to the Portuguese delegation. I must also, and this is rough, say hoş geldiniz to our Turkish delegation. As the convener of the Turkish-Irish friendship group, it is very special to see them here.
My childcare concerns are far behind me. That is the case for my own generation and it passes to the next. When my children have their own children, they are going to be in a better place to look after childcare because there have been extensive interventions through Government. Via the Minister, Deputy Foley, we have reduced childcare costs for families through significant increases in the national childcare scheme. We have introduced fee caps and increased State investment to make childcare much more affordable. We have expanded core funding and supports for childcare staff. However, affordability means little if there are no spaces. Looking across the country, and particularly in my own county of Louth, there is much housing being developed in Drogheda and east Meath, right up as far as the north county in Haggardstown. Those planning developments have childcare written into them, yet we are not seeing those crèches opening. They are either opening far too late, are being downsized or are just being forgotten completely. These young families - and they are young families that are moving into these developments - have nowhere to put their children. I will hazard a guess that they are being sold these houses on the basis of the availability of childcare, but there is very little use in their getting their dream homes if there is nowhere for childcare.
This is not just about childcare but also about women being able to move back into the workplace. We really need to have a timely debate in the House on how we can make sure that when planning developments to provide housing, affordable housing and any other kind of housing, including crèche or childcare facilities, those facilities must be built along with the first tranche of housing so that we are not waiting until the very end or seeing those facilities falling off completely.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-10/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:02+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-10