A new policy document launched by Sinn Féin on Thursday outlined the party’s proposals to cut childcare fees by two-thirds for families over a period of two years.
It is estimated that parents are currently spending approximately €400 million annually on childcare fees across the State. The childcare package proposed by Sinn Féin would provide two-thirds of this cost (€270 million) in additional public investment on the condition that providers reduce fees for parents.
The policy would offer childcare facilities the option of entering the scheme. Parents would still have to make a contribution but would pay two-thirds less on average than they currently pay under the proposals.
Speaking at the launch of the proposals on Thursday in Ringsend Irishtown Community Centre in Dublin, Sinn Féin’s spokesperson on children Kathleen Funchion said the high cost of childcare had resulted in women being “locked out of the workforce” in recent years.
There had been “lip service around encouraging women into various roles and posts” but “often the support is not there” due to the cost of childcare preventing women from being able to go to work and juggle careers, Ms Funchion said.
“If you’re a couple living in Dublin with one child in full-time childcare spending €214 a week on fees, under our proposal you’d save €138 every single week,” she said.
“That’s real money going back into people’s pockets and it’s a knock on benefit for local economies when people have that money.”
Sinn Féin spokesperson on finance, Pearse Doherty, said families were “forking out the equivalent of a second monthly mortgage or rental bill” on “extortionate” childcare fees.
“Childcare costs here are among the highest in Europe ... For years now we’ve had the Government talking about strategies to reduce child care costs, but what we see is over the last four years childcare costs in Dublin have increased. That extortionate amount has to be cut down. It can be done, it has to be delivered with urgency in the budget in the autumn,” he said.
The proposal also recommends introducing a fee control mechanism to accompany the investment via legislation and to build in a policy mechanism to annually review the fee structure and potential impact of inflation.
Staff in the sector had very little security and poor terms and conditions and there were growing concerns that the sector would continue to lose highly qualified staff to better paid careers, the document states.
The policy document recommends introducing “decent pay scales for all staff” and to explore the longer term option of moving to a fully fledged public service model.
