Childcare: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-09-23 ============================================================ Gareth Scahill (FG), Nominated by the Taoiseach The Minister is very welcome here this evening. I welcome the opportunity to speak on childcare. I commend my Government colleagues on bringing this motion to the House today because we have to be fair about where we are right now. There has been real progress. There has been record investment. The national childcare scheme has reduced costs for families. Average out-of-pocket childcare costs are down 36% since 2022. Budget 2026 provided almost €1.5 billion for early learning and childcare while core funding for 2026-27 has increased to a record €482 million. That is progress and we should acknowledge it but we also must acknowledge that we are not there yet. The programme for Government has committed us to progressively reducing the cost of childcare to €200 per month per child. We need to deliver on that commitment. I wish to particularly acknowledge my colleague, Deputy Emer Currie, who has done a huge amount of work on childcare. Deputy Currie has consistently raised affordability but importantly, she has also focused on the other side of the problem, which is availability. We can increase subsidies and reduce costs but a subsidy is not much good to a parent if they cannot find a childcare place in the first place. That is still the reality for too many families. This motion recognises that demand remains higher than supply in certain parts of the country, particularly for younger children. We also have a challenge around staffing. Again, there has been progress there. The early years workforce has grown to more than 42,000 people. The employment regulation order delivered an average pay increase of 10% to more than two thirds of that workforce. However, there is one figure from the Minister, Deputy Foley, that stood out to me. In the context of budget 2026, the Minister stated that improving recruitment and retention could help unlock approximately 17,000 existing childcare places that cannot currently be filled because of staff shortages. That is a remarkable figure. It tells us that this is not simply about building more childcare facilities. In some cases, the capacity is already there, but we do not have the people to staff it. At the same time, demand continues to grow. More than 286,000 children are expected to benefit from the national childcare scheme this year, which is approximately 35,000 more than last year. Now, we are moving into another important phase. The Government has committed €135 million to directly build and acquire childcare facilities for the first time. The initial State-led facilities are intended to provide more than 100 places each with thousands of additional places planned over the coming years. The motion before us recognises this major policy change, but it raises a question. Do we have a workforce plan capable of producing, and more importantly, retaining enough qualified early years educators to staff all these additional places? An issue that I have repeatedly raised regarding plans in this House is that we cannot plan buildings today and then start thinking about the staff skills needed tomorrow. The workforce plan must go together with the capital plan. We have training routes available. The programme for Government commits us to removing barriers to training and introducing an earn-and-learn apprenticeship model where people can work in childcare while gaining qualifications and progressing their career. I would like to see more movement on that. If we are serious about creating all these additional childcare places, we need to make sure that we are training enough people, attracting them into the sector and giving them a reason to stay. When this motion references State investment in areas of unmet need, particularly in rural areas, the Minister will not be surprised about me mentioning Boyle, County Roscommon. Multiple representatives have made for the Boyle Community Childcare Committee and the work that they have done in the past. They did not simply say there was a problem; they did the work. They commissioned a detailed childcare needs analysis. They gathered the evidence that clearly demonstrated the shortage of childcare in Boyle and the surrounding area. In a break from norm, I acknowledge Deputy Claire Kerrane, who has consistently advocated for additional childcare provision in Boyle. This also has been a real cross-party effort locally. I recognise Deputy Martin Daly, the Minister of State, Deputy Frankie Feighan and Councillors Liam Callaghan and Sean Moylan, who have all highlighted the need and worked to move this project forward. There is an important point here. We can all regularly call publicly for Government intervention. That is part of politics, and those calls are important. Ultimately, if want to see something delivered, we must bring that immediate need directly into the Government, put the evidence on the table and make sure that the people making the decisions understand the urgency of it. That is why I particularly wish to acknowledge the Minister, Deputy Chambers. He came to Boyle. He met Deputy Daly and me. We sat in the family resource centre in Boyle. We listened to the community representatives - the people involved - and heard directly about the difficulties that families are facing. The case for Boyle has been raised by us all at the highest level in Government. I acknowledge the Taoiseach and Tánaiste for listening and understanding why this is so important for Boyle and north Roscommon. I acknowledge the Minister for her engagement on this particular issue. Last week when the Dáil returned, Deputy Kerrane raised the issue of Boyle with the Minister. The Minister's response indicated that an announcement on locations for the State-led childcare facility is due shortly. I am certainly not going to pre-empt any announcement on that. Boyle has made the case. The evidence is there. The need is there. The community has done the work. The Government now has the mechanism to respond to that. For the first time, the State is directly building and acquiring childcare facilities in areas where the existing system has not been able to meet demand. I also strongly support the point of colocation childcare, which is mentioned in this motion. Councillor Caroline Brady in Lucan recently raised this with me and highlighted the issue regarding Aderrig in Adamstown near Lucan. Senator Curley is there as well. We sit on the education committee. If we are building these schools, colocation is a very important factor. I have run out of time. I met a nurse in Roscommon on Monday. The nurse was doing a very important job in a busy healthcare facility. When she saw me coming through the door, she mentioned the lack of childcare facilities and the decision that she has to make in the next three months of whether to continue in her important and necessary role or to look after her kids because of the lack of that facility. I will leave the Minister with that thought. --- 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