Childcare Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-23
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Ruth Coppinger (PBP), Dublin West

I do get that it is the first step but it is a very slow process. It needs to be a lot more ambitious and radical. It took long enough for a realisation that the State needed to lead on childcare in Ireland. In other countries, it is par for the course. Things like training schools have to be set up where people would be guaranteed decent pay and conditions. It is appalling what many childcare workers are paid. It would be good if the State was able to underwrite it in the same way it does for education, by keeping electricity and insurance costs down, because that is what is breaking an awful lot of the private childcare providers. By the way, there are a lot of excellent private childcare providers. It is not their fault. A lot of them obviously love children, while others are just doing it as a big business. I hope that they could be incorporated into the system because obviously people would not be excluded. We cannot move forward unless there is a huge increase in the number of staff and buildings available. Schools can also be used much more than they are. After school hours the premises are all there. A lot of parents have raised that, and schools are saying "No" when they are asked.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-23/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:06+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-23