Debate contribution: Childcare: High-quality and Affordable Provision

Debate contribution by Ms Sorcha Eastwood on 12 February 2024.

MLA

Ms Sorcha Eastwood

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

12 February 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Childcare: High-quality and Affordable Provision

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4218049

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. I acknowledge that this is my maiden speech, and I am humbled and privileged to take my place in the Chamber to serve the people of Lagan Valley. I also acknowledge my former colleague Trevor Lunn, who previously held this seat and served his constituents with distinction, and I pay my thanks to him. I also thank the Lagan Valley Alliance Association, without whom none of this would be possible, my family and, lastly, my husband, Dale. Lagan Valley is my home, where my family has had its roots for hundreds of years and still lives on our small farm in Blaris, County Down, where my mum, Brigid, was born. It is a place that I love and will always love. Lisburn or Lios na gCearrbhachs means "Fort of the Gamblers", but gambling is what we have done too much of lately. We have been gambling with people's lives in high-stakes games of politics. We need to reform the institutions so that no one party can again hold us to ransom. I was 12 when the Good Friday Agreement was signed, and my generation was promised the best. We were promised more than just the absence of violence: we were promised the economic and social benefits of peace. Peace comes dropping slow, as they say, but the economic and social policies that we need to allow this generation and the one behind to achieve their full potential are severely lacking.

However, I promise that my generation will not leave the hard work behind for the ones coming after. This generation will finish it and make good on what we were all promised.

If a peace process takes 50 years, we are about halfway, and that is more than past time to move beyond what sometimes passes for politics here. Indeed, we can be quite good at it when this place and its people are not being used as leverage. The people cannot wait any more. We must stop exporting our best assets — our people — from these shores. Addressing the issue of childcare would be key to meeting that aim. I believe that our best days are yet to come, and together we can create them. We are no longer painting in just monochrome but have a wide, varied and beautiful palette of colour. We must have that vision and belief to give people hope and a future, to convince them that we can make their lives better — not by just words but with deeds — and to rebuild trust and faith in these institutions. Within a mile of my home in Lagan Valley, there are Egyptian societies, women's resource centres, Gaelic pitches, chess clubs, Orange halls, young farmers' clubs and an LGBT safe space club. That is the new Northern Ireland, the North, our home, your home. This land, this island, the home of saints and scholars, of Harry Ferguson and Jocelyn Bell Burnell, has punched well above its weight on the world stage. Despite all our challenges, we still have incredible inventors and makers. There are many more like them waiting to be discovered, but they either do not have adequate childcare or are bankrupting themselves to pay for it. Our challenge is to create together the ecosystem, the society to allow those makers to flourish, not despite of us but because of us. Indeed, if the signature of this mandate can be anything, let it be empowering people, not simply holding them back. However, childcare is one issue holding many people back, particularly women. It takes a village, but the situation for many parents now is at breaking point. Even as I speak, families in Lagan Valley are reeling from the closure of a local childcare provider. Things are not tenable as they are, and we cannot let them slip further on our watch. A progressive childcare policy is a key economic driver. We know that Northern Ireland has a low productivity rate and yet high economic inactivity. We know that many parents are being forced from working due to exorbitant childcare costs, and that is having a hugely adverse impact on our workforce. While we talk about empowering parents to fulfil their ambitions, let us also talk about the childcare workforce. Childcare is a highly skilled profession and one that demands a lot more of society's respect. The childcare profession is full of people who want to develop, and we need to support them to do that. That is why Alliance believes that a key element of childcare policy should be the introduction of a clear skills and qualification framework. This policy will require a significant investment, and we should not shy away from that. Quality care should require significant investment. Our children deserve that investment. While that will be costly, it will cost us more to do nothing. I support the motion and look forward to working with the whole House on these issues in the years to come.

832 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not qualifying

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:36 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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