Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has described a proposal by Minister Shane Ross for a grant for grandparents who take care for their grandchildren, as a half-baked election gimmick<\/p>\n
The Sinn F\u00e9in TD said he would be better spending his time coming up with workable proposals that would relieve the burden on families\u2019 childcare costs.<\/p>\n
Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe said:<\/p>\n
\u201cChildcare costs are at an all-time high, with many hard pressed parents paying the equivalent of a second mortgage in cr\u00e8che fees.<\/p>\n
\u201cMinister Ross and his Independent Alliance have suggested giving a grant to grandparents which would cost taxpayers a whopping \u20ac70 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cSurely their time would be better spent on bringing forward workable proposals that will effectively bring costs down so that every parent who wishes to avail of childcare can do so.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead they appear to be looking at half-baked election gimmicks that may be popular with some grandparents but will do nothing to resolve the crisis in childcare.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone recognizes the increasing and important role that many grandparents play in caring for grandchildren, but this crude giveaway proposal will not resolve the childcare crisis or make it more manageable for their children.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Crowe continued:<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately decades of Government underinvestment in early year\u2019s services have led us as a society to where we are now paying astronomical figures for childcare.<\/p>\n
\u201cSinn F\u00e9in’s alternative Budget for last year was fully-costed and set out proposals that would half the cost of childcare for families. A key component of that was through significant increases in the Universal Childcare Subsidy.<\/p>\n
\u201cAccording to Shane Ross, his so-called \u2018Granny Grant\u2019 would cost \u20ac70 million. In comparison, based on last year\u2019s figures from the Department of Finance, it would cost \u20ac116 million to cut the cost of childcare by half, through an increase of the Universal Childcare Subsidy of \u20ac2 per hour.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe proposal by the Independent Alliance seems to be more about the next election than about any real attempt to reform our childcare system and bring about a system that is affordable to parents.<\/p>\n
\u201cSurely the way forward is to adopt the Sinn F\u00e9in model and cut the costs for parents by half.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has described a proposal by Minister Shane Ross for a grant for grandparents who take care for their grandchildren, as a half-baked election gimmick The Sinn F\u00e9in TD said he would be better spending his time coming up with workable proposals that would relieve the burden on families\u2019 childcare […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-child-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3557,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3556\/revisions\/3557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}