Creche fees are set to be capped so no parent is paying more than their monthly mortgage repayment for their children to be looked after.

New Children’s Minister Roderic O’Gorman is hoping to outline a proposal to cap childcare fees within the next year to ensure parents do not face disincentives to going back to work.

Under the proposals, increased subsidies to private childcare providers would be linked to the fee cap. “When childcare becomes more expensive than the mortgage, that becomes a massive disadvantage, a disincentive,” he told the Sunday Independent.

“We want to be in a position where parents are no longer pressured by the fact they have to pay a very substantial childcare bill.”

The new Green Party cabinet minister is promising radical reforms to the sector including a new state agency, Childcare Ireland, which will be tasked with reducing costs and improving standards.

O’Gorman wants an analysis of the caps in place in other European countries and a proposal to put to government within the next year.

“I think that’s absolutely something we want to achieve, we want to get a clear vision as to what sort of fees parents will be paying,” he said. “In principle, I’ve no issue with capping fees.

“We have to let the work be undertaken to actually see how the existing National Childcare Scheme could operate to provide those subsidies. You’d be linking increased subsidies to the various providers with the cap on fees.”

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He said Childcare Ireland would look at the issue of affordability, as well as look at the quality of creche facilities, accessibility and raising overall standards. Ultimately, the Government will look at potentially developing a state-led childcare sector, he said.

“I think as we get increased state support and increased budgetary support each year into that system, we can actually target it more effectively, but also ensure that all parents benefit,” he said.

O’Gorman, a new TD for Dublin West, said the Government was making up for years of “no state involvement in the early years sector, which is completely at variance with what the rest of Europe is doing”.

“We are catching up and [we’re] going to be catching up for a long time going forward and it is an issue that’s of huge concern to parents. At every second door in Dublin West during the election, the issue of childcare – the fact that it’s more than a mortgage payment – was being raised with me and that’s what this Government needs to address.”

He said he would look to broaden existing schemes such as Early Childhood Care and Education and the National Childcare Scheme to make sure more parents have access to subsidies. “You can use whatever additional resources you have to target particular groups, particular income brackets, or you can use it to actually widen the entire accessibility of the scheme,” he said.

As the Minister for Children, Disability, Equality and Integration, O’Gorman also has responsibility for the new Government’s commitment to abolish Direct Provision in the next five years.

He said the controversial system of accommodating asylum seekers solely hits minority groups and while it was not designed as a racist system, “its impact is racist” and that it does not provide “any degree of dignity” to people in it.

A white paper on what the new accommodation system for people in the international protection process will look like will be published by the end of the year.

O’Gorman said approved housing bodies and the State will play a direct role in the provision of housing to asylum seekers.

“I think the first element is that it will be not-for-profit and I think that has to be a clear element that this idea that people are making money from an inhumane system is not acceptable,” he said.

He said there has been “no political will” to abolish the system but that it now exists with the specific commitment in the programme for government. “No one ever seriously tried to change it in that 20-year period,” he said.

O’Gorman said he wanted to introduce a number of reforms by the end of this year, including reducing the time asylum seekers must wait to apply for work and making it easier for an asylum seeker to get a driver’s licence.

He said ideally an asylum seeker application should be processed within 12 to 18 months of the person arriving in the country.

“We should be providing people with accommodation that meets basic human rights and basic standards of dignity and that’s what I am proposing to do,” he added.

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/fees-for-creche-must-be-less-than-mortgage-39360557.html