Childcare: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-09-23 ============================================================ Joe Conway (IND), Cultural and Educational Panel Cuirim fáilte mhór roimh an Aire agus í anseo don díospóireacht seo. I am delighted to make my small contribution to this debate, which is timely and valuable. Notwithstanding the fact we have a beautiful country and have so many assets in our beauty and in our resources, we sometimes overlook the fact that probably one of the greatest resources we have - this will come as no surprise to anyone, particularly those of us who served in education - is our young people, our children. They tangibly and unquestionably are the future, the well-being and the welfare of our country. When we talk about childcare, we are talking about a vast number of young people who are being looked after by the childcare industry, which does invaluable work on behalf of parents or guardians who are out at work or unable to look after children. I want to sing a little tune for the, according to 2022 CSO figures, roughly 100,000 totally unpaid child carers. Mostly, these are grandparents who look after children without any financial reward or tax consideration. Many of them would completely eschew the idea of payment for their work. It is a reciprocal and symbiotic thing. These people get a huge amount back through being closer to their grandchildren as they grow from babyhood to toddler stages. These grandparents absolutely rejoice in seeing all those stages. We have an expression that "Eaten bread is soon forgotten" but in the case of the input of grandparents or those unpaid carers, it is not so much eaten bread that is soon forgotten but eaten bread that is never remembered at all. I do not think I have ever heard any of us politicians publicly stand up and validate the work that is done. Maybe I have missed it but I do not believe I have ever heard a Minister, the Taoiseach or the Tánaiste celebrate and validate in some public way the work that these people do. It should be not just once but should be done regularly. If we extrapolate from the CSO figures, on a replacement value alone it probably would cost €5 billion to €6 billion. On the overheads measurement, it would be in the order of getting closer to €20 billion. It is phenomenal money that we are getting free of charge. It is done out of love and care. We should have some way of endorsing and validating the work done by these lovely people - grandparents in the main - and I ask the Minister to give serious thought to it with her Cabinet colleagues and maybe devise some scheme or some little word of recognition for those people who give so much to the State out of love. --- 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/2026-09-23/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:49+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-09-23