Release from the PCP Press Office

For a public network of daycare centres that ensures free access to all children

The expansion of access to free daycare centres in September, announced by the Government, is the result of the proposal, persistence and initiative of the PCP that has ensured, since 2020, that tens of thousands of children have access. The gratuitousness of daycare centres was an objective laid down in the 2019 PCP’s Electoral Programme and the subject of legislative initiatives and had its first steps in the State Budget for 2020, through its intervention. 

On the part of the PS and the Government, this need for children and families always found procrastination, delays and pretexts to limit the number of children covered, whether phased by income levels or by age. While the planned expansion is important, it is clearly insufficient and does not elude the obstacles that the PS and the Government have placed for the full implementation of this objective.

Besides defending free daycare centres for all children, the PCP has advocated the creation of a public network of daycare centres. An indispensable solution to ensure the right of access to daycare and that the PS and the Government have rejected, and to which the latest announcement does not respond.

In the absence of an accurate survey of the situation, it is clear that the age group from zero to three years is the only one that does not have a public response, and that the existing vacancies in Private Social Welfare Institutions (IPSS) and Mercy Charities are not sufficient for the number of children old enough to attend a daycare centre. 

The PCP reaffirms the need to create a public network of daycare centres throughout the national territory, to ensure a place for all babies up to 3 years, ensuring the creation of 100,000 new childcare vacancies by 2026, that is, by the end of the current legislature. The Government must ensure the necessary investment to build or rehabilitate buildings for this purpose, establish priorities according to the areas most in need of vacancies, admit equivalent solutions while the network is not completed, as well as define pedagogical guidelines for all daycare centres, under the responsibility of the Ministry of Education.

The lack of vacancies and the inherent costs condition the decision of families to have children, and introduce factors of inequality between children during a crucial o period of their development.

This is a response essential to the country, which enables giving security to families when deciding to have children, ensuring a universal, quality response, to all children, for which the PCP will continue to fight. The procrastination in this as in other central issues for the country reveals the real aim why the PS asked for an absolute majority: to carry out a policy that the right would execute.

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