Sinn Féin has unveiled a childcare plan which aims to reduce costs for parents to €10 a day per child.
The party is also proposing to increase the pay of early years educators in a bid to increase capacity in the constrained early childhood sector.
Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Féin leader, said that childcare costs are often compared to a second mortgage, with some parents paying hundreds of euros a month in creche fees.
She said it can force parents to reduce their work hours or give up their jobs entirely, and affects women’s careers, in particular.
“Investing to build a modern, responsive, fit for purpose childcare system is one of the smartest investments any government could ever make,” she said.
The plan proposes capping the daily cost of childcare to €10 per child under the National Childcare Scheme, costing a total of €345 million a year.
It also proposes extending the scheme to make it available to 90 per cent of childminders, who will have to register themselves to take part in the scheme.
The party is also proposing a pay increase for early years educators of 1.50 an hour for all grades within the sector, costing a total of €53.8 million.
This would increase the minimum rate from €13.65 to €15.15 an hour.
Parental leave and benefit would also be extended to give families an additional eight weeks under the plan, at a cost of 106 million euro a year.
One-parent families would get an extra nine weeks again to allow single parents to be with their child for the first year of their life if they wished to do so.
Children's spokesperson Claire Kerrane said that the current funding from the State is costing a billion euro a year, and argued that the funding proposed by Sinn Féin was minimal to make it more affordable and accessible.
Sinn Féin finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty said that the proposals would be funded through the “significant surpluses” of billions of euro the state is running every year.
“You will see in any budget that there’s a budgetary package well in excess of this here, of billions. And even with the budgetary package of that nature, there are still billions of euro of surpluses that the state has. So there’s no need to be increase in taxes on people.
“This is also, at the heart of it, a cost-of-living measure. People will be able to go from €800 a month in childcare fees right down to 200 from September on if Sinn Fein lead the next government.”
The party was also calling for a review of the Core Funding model, claiming that some providers are receiving 8,000 euro and others are receiving €600,000.
The proposals come after Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader Simon Harris said that he believed childcare should be a publicly funded service provided through the education sector, and Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman said the State should play a greater role in providing childcare.
Ms McDonald criticised Mr Harris’s comments as “a soundbite” and said Fine Gael had already been given an opportunity in government to implement childcare reforms.
“The current government and Taoiseach has had many, many years to make that a reality, to take the kind of steps that we’re describing today, and they’ve chosen not to,” she said.
“Instead, it seems, on the brow of an election, they are running a soundbite, rather than a clearly thought-out proposal or plan or a clear-cut commitment to parents in the here and now.”
Ms Kerrane said that looking at a public childcare model would take “a lot of work”, which she added the Sinn Fein party wanted to do but that parents “can’t wait for”.
“I heard the Taoiseach speaking this morning about 100 days into the next government, if they’re in it, having a road map. Parents are struggling to pay for childcare right now, and our plan deals with the here and now.”
Mr Doherty said that their proposals cost over €600 million which would be paid for by the billions of euro of surpluses Ireland had had in recent years, fuelled by volatile corporate tax revenue.
He said that they did not cost how much a fully public model would run to, and said it was not clear what exactly Fine Gael were proposing.
“Are they talking about a free, public model? Simon Harris is talking about affordable, what does that mean? Is it 200, 600, 800? There’s no detail,” he said.
