Richard Boyd Barrett Warns of Childcare Crisis as Creche Places Lost

Last Tuesday I was asked to go to what I can only describe as an emergency meeting of parents of children who were in a creche, in this case a creche called a Magic Roundabout, who were already paying €1,100 in monthly creche fees, which I just find staggering, but those fees were going to go up to €1,250 and 20 of the parents were going to lose their kids places in the creche, because Tuzla came in, said they needed to make changes, they made the necessary changes, then Tuzla came back and said, well because of the changes you've made, the floor space has now been reduced, and you have to get rid of 20 of your kids, and this is in the middle of the term, right, unbelievable, and this comes against a background where I think it's 27 creches are threatened currently, and parents are saying they're being left in the dark about these things, these parents absolutely just flabbergasted, shocked and don't know what they're going to do, in this case they've asked for a meeting with Minister Zappone, to discuss the matter, and I want to stress, Taoiseach, if there was any health and safety or fire safety issues, these parents would be the first to say, you know, something has to be done, but what's not acceptable, is the sort of ham-fisted, box-ticking, blunt instrument approach, that appears to be taken by two of Tuzla, in terms of crash facilities, compliance, and so on, and the big point that the parents made, is, how can you bring in a scheme for two years free, you know, preschool, care of the ecchi scheme, but not actually provide for the places for them, right, and for the shockingly high levels of cost, that these parents have to, have to endure, so I'd like you to comment on that, because judging from the attitude of that meeting, there is an explosion on the way, on the issue of child care costs, and the lack of child care places. Thank you, Deputy, Taoiseach, just over four minutes. Thanks, Ken Corwin, I want to thank deputies for the questions, Deputy Burton raised the issue of undocumented minors living in Ireland, and I think the House will be aware, from time to time, we do introduce schemes to regularise undocumented migrants in the country, this isn't an amnesty, of course, we've agreed on EU level, that there will not be amnesties, and that's part of our commitment, to our European partners, and also, any time we have a scheme to regularise undocumented migrants, we always need to consult with the United Kingdom, because it does have impacts on the common travel area, but within those confines, of the common travel area, and the EU pact, not to have any amnesties, we do, from time to time, have schemes to regularise migrants, indeed, the one that we had, most recently, was a scheme to regularise, people who came here, on a student visa, from outside of the EA, and became undocumented for one reason or another, and we offered regularisation to, those who came to the country, on student visas, became undocumented, both for them, and their dependents, that just finished up, this year, and we actually regularised 2,000 people under that scheme, and actually worked very well, in my view, and has been a very useful scheme for me, in going to the United States, because I can say that, now, in Congress, in the White House, we're not asking you to do anything for our undocumented, that we haven't done, here in Ireland, so, if the US were to copy our scheme, essentially, it'd say, to anyone who came to the US, on a J1 visa, or a student visa, became undocumented, that there would be a pathway to regularisation for them, and it's become useful, for me, to be able to go to the US, and say, we're not looking for anything, from the US, that we haven't done, here, in terms of, documenting people, undocumented, who entered on a student visa, there is another group, that we do want to look at next, and is exactly the group, that Deputy Burton mentions, and those are people, who, came to Ireland, as children, and, really, know, no other home, than Ireland, they're not going to be deported, and they've never really lived in the country, in which they were born, or perhaps the country, in which their parents were born, some of them were born in Ireland, so, we need to, that's the next one, that we're examining, doing, but we do need to get these right, and make sure that, that they're properly organised, and, can't be abused, or don't undermine our commitments, to the European Union, or to the common travel area, but, it's the next group, they want to take, take a serious look at, and, and I have met some of the, some of those young people, and I imagine Deputy Burton has, you know, they grew up here, they speak with Dublin accents, or Cork accents, or Dunyall accents, or whatever accents, they're not going to be deported, it would be right to regularise them, we just need to, get it right, and we've got it right for the students, I think we can get it right for, those, what Americans would call dreamers, as well. On universal healthcare, the policy of universal healthcare, is to provide free, or highly subsidised healthcare for all, there are many models, under which, that can be done, across the European Union, very different models, there's often an assumption in Ireland, that the NHS is the system they have across Europe, it's not, every country has a very different public health system, and healthcare doesn't prescribe, which model we should follow, it says, it talks about co-payments, it talks about free services, it talks about many things, but it's something that we need to do step by step, I think we've made a lot of progress already on GP care, nearly half the country now has access to free GP care, and that's going to be extended to children aged 7 and 8, next year having extended it to those on lower incomes this year, increasing income this year, and carers the year before, we're also, as people know, in every budget, we're reducing prescription charges, both for people with medical cards, and for those who don't, by reducing the DPS threshold, that will continue, and we're extending eligibility for medical cards, one of the first things we did as a Finnegan-Independent Alliance government, was to give medical cards as a right to children with serious disabilities, regardless of their parents' income, and under previous governments, they were often subject to review, children with very serious disabilities would lose their medical cards, because their parents' incomes went up, and that doesn't happen anymore, any child in receipt of DCA is also entitled to a medical card, regardless of their parents' income, and the next change will be around the income limit for the over 70s, improving that, so that more people over 70 can contribute, the number of medical cards goes up and down all the time, and it generally goes down when there's more people in work, that's what you'd expect, that's, yeah, yeah, well, the threshold has stayed the same, so the reason why the numbers have gone down is because incomes have gone up, that is the reason why the numbers have gone down, which I would have thought most people would think is a good thing. Obviously, it's a fair deal, there's also a form of universal health care, with co-payment systems, and we need to do something similar around home care, we are examining hospital charges as well, as a possible further step, but it's not something that you do in one go, it's something you do over a period of budgets, and we're making some progress on that. Deputy Martin asked me a very fair question, when are the numbers of people who are living in emergency accommodation, the number of people who are homeless, going to go down, and the truth is I can't answer that question. I can tell you that we've taken more people out of homelessness in the last year than ever in the country's history, but the numbers becoming homeless is roughly the same, and that's why the numbers have been roughly the same for the past year or so now. And the drivers of homelessness are different ones. It's people losing their private rental accommodation, but it's also people who experience family breakdown, and there's no reliable way to know how many people are going to become homeless. We can know how many people are going to stop becoming homeless when they come to us, or the numbers that we can get out of emergency accommodation. And we've never taken more people out of homelessness, but at the same time as many people become homeless, and there's no way of predicting that for sure. What I can say, though, and I think this is worth putting on the record as it all, in the year before Rebuilding Ireland was introduced as our policy, in the year before Rebuilding Ireland became our policy, the numbers of families who are homeless increased by 60%. In the past year, the number of families who are homeless increased by 0.17%. So that shows the difference that Rebuilding Ireland has made. It hasn't got the numbers down yet, but before Rebuilding Ireland, homelessness was rising at 60% a year. In the past year, it's risen by just over 0%, 0.17%. On social housing, by the way, we are meeting our targets. And in relation to the question around Deputy Doherty Special Advisor, he's a secondee from another part of the public service, and as is the norm when somebody is seconded from one part of the public service to another part, they stay on the same salary. Question 6, Taoiseach. Remind members, if they consume the time asking the questions, it leaves no time for them to be answered. I mean, if five questions are asked, and one of us should take up three minutes of an answer, I mean, there must be some discipline on answering two. True. Every five questions, that's usually between 15 and 20. Well, anyway, we're at number 6, Taoiseach. Can I pose to take questions 6 to 9 together? The Cabinet Committee on Security deals with issues relating to justice, defence, Garda reform and national security. It last met on Wednesday, 30 October 2019, and the next meeting will be scheduled in the next few weeks. It encompasses matters that were previously under the remit of Cabinet Committee G, justice, and F, national security. The implementation of a policing service for the future. The Government's implementation plan for policing reform is progressing well, and updates on the progress made to date are available on the policing reform webpage at gov.ie. As part of the implementation of the report of the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland, the National Security Analysis Centre was established to coordinate across the relevant departments and agencies in providing strategic analyses to government. The Centre is establishing its business arrangements in close cooperation with partner departments and agencies. With regard to the transformation of the Department of Justice and Equality, significant progress has been made this year, including detailing the new functional design for the new Department and implementing it in August and September. The fifth report of the Effectiveness and Renewal Group is published on the Department's website at justice.ie. Work is ongoing to implement the recommendations of the Public Service Pay Commission with regard to the Defence Forces, and I welcome the decision taken by both recognised associations, PD Fora and RACO, to accept the recommendations. While this will be an important step in helping to get our Defence Forces back up to full strength, I accept that more needs to be done on both pay and non-pay issues for the Defence Forces.