Childcare Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
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Mark Wall (LAB), Kildare South

By the end of the day I will be sending the Minister a number of proposals from County Kildare because so many families are asking me this question. The problem I have with the Minister's answer is that we are still reliant on viable proposals. Parents are hard-working, as we have just discussed with regard to parental leave, so how are they to come up with premises? I have contacted schools and local sports clubs to try to get them involved in this and they are not forthcoming with the premises. We still have these deserts, as I call them, in Kildare and other counties because I have been contacted by people in other counties. I ask again that when the Department receives these multiple questions from parents it looks at these deserts and works with the parents, who are ordinary decent families working each day but finding it more and more difficult to get childcare places and do not have the time, energy or perhaps know-how to identify places. This is where I believe the Department and the childcare committees come in. I ask that when the Minister receives the proposals from me later today she actively looks at them and at providing childcare places in County Kildare where they are needed.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-17