FG Public Childcare Plan threadbare on details
- Parents desperate for a childcare place can’t afford another half-baked plan from Fine Gael.
Labour candidate for Dublin South West, Cllr Ciaran Ahern has described the Fine Gael plan for 30,000 public early year places by 2030 as threadbare on details, and urged parent’s and early educators to back Labour’s comprehensive proposals for a universal public system of early years education and care.
Cllr Ahern said:
“Labour has published a detailed, costed plan on how we will develop a public childcare system to deliver at least 30,000 public early years education and care places by 2030.
“We are proposing to roll out 6,000 new public childcare places a year across an average of 100 new services with an average of 11 staff per service, building this up every year. This will cost about €53m a year. Over five years operating costs would increase to €300m with 30,000 places.
“We will roll out these services initially through ETBs, and new locations will be identified through existing publicly owned sites and buildings in the education sector and local authorities.
“We launched our plan two weeks ago but today FG seems to have copied our homework but left out all the key details.
“It is incredible to see a party with so much self-described new energy publish a plan today devoid of detail on how they will roll out 30,000 early learning places. All their policy says is:
“Expand Early Learning Places: We’ll create 30,000 new early learning places in public early learning and school aged care services by 2030, offering full-day and school-age care in areas of unmet need to close existing gaps and prepare for future demand. We will include an opt-in for private and community providers where appropriate.”
“In their press release they say these places will be in local authority and state-owned buildings, but they don’t outline how these services will be staffed, run or operated, or how much it will cost.
“Details of Labour’s comprehensive plan are available here: https://labour.ie/manifesto/childrens-charter/
“Parents desperate for a childcare place can’t afford another half-baked plan from Fine Gael.”