People Before Profit has called for a publicly funded National Childcare Service, free for all who want to use it. 

The party is also calling for 12 months’ paid leave for each parent in the first two years of their child’s life.

“We want to see [childcare] fully nationalised as a service that is respected - just as our national and secondary schools are,” TD Bríd Smith said.

“Obviously, we don’t want to push out the managers and the owners and the workers who are in the current system of childcare.

“We’d rather see them being brought into a national system where they’re treated as public servants, paid properly and looked after properly.”

Kids at a nursery. Image: Alamy.com

The party said the policies would be paid for by the budget surplus and, in the longer-term, through the substantial increases in taxes on big business and the wealthy.

“We have always advocated and continue to advocate that there [would be] much, much more revenue to be had, to bring into the public system for public services if we were to introduce a wealth tax,” Deputy Smith said.

“There’s a huge amount of untaxed wealth in this country; we propose very modest measures but the Government never discusses this question of a wealth tax.

“We want to see that being part of that discourse.”

Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe has said the budget surplus could disappear “very, very quickly” if revenue from corporation tax receipts drop.

With that in mind, the Government has set up two savings funds with money from the surplus.

Main image: A group of children from a nursery school in high visibility jackets. Picture by: Alamy.com