Supporting parents in the cost-of-living crisis and ensuring every child gets the best start in life has always been a priority for me as TD for Carlow-Kilkenny. While in Government, the Green Party has overseen a number of long-term measures designed to help parents and support families. These include:
Halving childcare costs
Increased parental leave
Free school books
Free hot meals at school
Free public transport for Under 9s
Every successive budget since the Green Party took office more than four years ago has been aimed at making Ireland a fairer and more progressive country by supporting the people who need it most, including far-reaching measures to improve children's lives and to combat the cost-of-living crisis.
Introduced in 2019 as a small pilot and set to be rolled out to all interested schools in 2025, the Hot School Meals programme has been shown to have huge benefits for the wellbeing of children in schools, improving their attendance and making parents' lives easier.
Further relieving the burden of back-to-school costs for parents each year, we introduced free school books for all primary school children, which has now been extended up to Leaving Certificate. Older students and their families have also benefitted from the abolition of fees to sit the State exams while the cost of third-level fees have also been reduced.
We have always believed that early years care and education is a vital public good that must be guaranteed by the State, to give every child an equal start. Over the last four years, we have transformed the early years sector in Ireland with the largest-ever year-on-year increase in investment.
We have halved average costs for parents, stabilised the outlook for providers, and agreed the first-ever pay deal for employees. We’ve doubled investment in the sector and expanded childcare places. We extended the National Childcare Scheme to include childminders, and introduced Equal Start, a new DEIS-inspired model of support for children experiencing disadvantage.
It’s the Green Party’s objective to give every child in Ireland a guaranteed right to an ECCE place, no matter where they live. To do this the State must begin to deliver Early Years Education as a public provider, alongside private services working in partnership with the State. Key to this will be new measures in pay and employment conditions for Early Years Educators to increase quality, and drive recruitment and expansion of service.
Under the Parent’s Leave and Benefit schemes, the number of weeks that parents can take time off work with financial support from the State, increased from 2 weeks to 9 weeks. The Greens were also behind the ‘baby boost’ payment that sees €420 paid to new mothers on the birth of their child. We’ve also seen increases in child benefit and one-off pre-Christmas Children’s Allowance payments.
We’ll continue to support families and move Ireland towards a new public model of early years education. Our children are at the core of our communities and if re-elected to the Dáil, I’ll work along with my Party to deliver for families and ensure every child gets the best possible chance to thrive.
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