This morning I had the pleasure of meeting former comrades from the SIPTU trade union alongside people from Age Action Ireland, the National Women's Council of Ireland, the Irish Senior Citizens Parliament and Active Retirement Ireland.

They are all part of the Pension Promise campaign. These very effective campaigners brought us the Stop 67 campaign before the most recent election. That campaign had a tremendous impact on the election. Outside the gates of Leinster House today, they are basically calling the Government to account over the promise it made to bring pensions up to the equivalent of 34% of average earnings. That commitment is in the programme for Government. Like so many other promises this Government has made, it has clearly been abandoned. Right now, achieving that equivalency would require an increase of €53 in pensions. We all accept that will not be practicable to achieve in the budget, but the lack of planning during this Government’s term in office to hit that target is entirely unacceptable, particularly when one considers that one in five pensioners is at risk of poverty, as we know from the 2022 survey of income and living conditions. One in three pensioners living alone is at risk of poverty. Those figures have dramatically increased due to the cost-of-living crisis. I wish to hold the Government to account for the promise it put in its manifesto but has clearly abandoned. I am calling for a debate on this topic. We need to debate how we can improve pension payments sustainably for everybody. That promise needs to be kept. A roadmap needs to be made to ensure it is kept.

The second issue I wish to raise is that of early years educators. There are real difficulties at the joint labour committee at the moment. It seems that the employer side, including the Federation of Early Childhood Providers, which was outside these buildings last week, proposed a pay increase of 65 cent for early years educators. In other words, instead of the early years educators getting €13 an hour, which all present would agree is entirely inadequate, the employers are proposing €13.65. That is not in any way acceptable. I did not hear that message last week when they were outside the gates of the Parliament. It is clear a sustainable pay rise is needed to enable people to have a career in early years education. It is interesting to note that the Minister, Deputy O’Gorman, said he allocated €200 million for pay increases in the budget last year. According to SIPTU, only €55 million of that has been spent on pay increases. There is a real difference between what the employers’ group is saying, with its offer of a pay increase of 65 cent an hour, and what the unions are saying. It is clear we need to move to a publicly funded childcare model. That is what the National Women’s Council of Ireland, NWCI, has called for. My party, Sinn Féin, has been seeking for that to be done for some time. That is the debate we need to have in order to secure a real future for childcare and early years educators. Let us have that debate in this Chamber as soon as possible. We cannot sit through another budget where workers on the front line continue on wages that are entirely unacceptable in this day and age.

I will follow on the theme raised by the Senator. Last week, providers closed their crèches for the day and took part in a campaign outside the gates of Leinster House. The previous week, however, the NWCI held the Purple for Public campaign. A significant amount of work has been done on this issue by the NWCI and SIPTU’s Big Start campaign. The childcare crisis is not new. It has been going on for many years. We know thousands of places throughout Dublin are closing down. Why is that the case? It is because childcare has been left up to the ebb and flow of the free and private market. My local crèche in my constituency of Dublin South-Central closed last year. A new planning application has been lodged for the site but it does not include the provision of a crèche. Instead, it includes the provision of a private gym. The private childcare system has failed. Parents are exhausted from months of stressing about securing affordable childcare. Children are being ferried out of their communities to scarce services. Staff are worried about whether their facilities can continue to run and are in low-pay, precarious jobs. We need a new model that guarantees affordable, local and secure childcare for every stakeholder. That cannot be delivered through the private system that is currently being operated. It must be a public system, akin to how primary schools are operated. Staff should be on public employment contracts with fair wages, children should be guaranteed a place and parents should not be price gouged. We should not be relying on private developers to provide those facilities, some of which are completely inadequate. Instead, just as the Department of Education does for schools, there should be forward planning for childcare needs and then the provision of those facilities.

The only way we can guarantee secure, affordable and accessible childcare is by letting the State intervene and it being the leader in it, funding, managing and creating more childcare options in our community. If the Government fails to step up on this, it is failing parents, children and workers in the childcare sector across the country.