The Green Party wants to provide accessible education and childcare for all

We want to strengthen excellence, equality and inclusion throughout the education system. The Green Party want to provide easy access to affordable childcare for all parents, to ease the financial burden many now experience.

Inclusive education

• Remove the “baptism barrier” to school admissions
• Create flexible, mobile third level education
• Include all sexual identities and gender identities in the Relationships and Sexuality curriculum to avoid excluding LGBTQI people

The Green Party believes that everyone should be able to benefit fully from education. The education system should empower people to fulfil their potential and improve their prospects no matter what their social background. No child should be denied a school place or be made to feel unwelcome in a school due to their religious background. We believe that religious instruction should take place outside of the classroom.

Supporting parents

• Introduce a childcare payment, and mandate a price ceiling for childcare services
• Provide for six months of paid parental leave to follow maternity leave and unpaid parental leave up to a child’s third birthday
• Introduce a comprehensive school meals programme
• Limit the financial demands schools makes on parents by subsidising school books and eliminating other charges

We believe in a new model for childcare in Ireland, one that allows parents to be available to their children in the early stages of their lives and is responsive to the changing childcare needs of parents and children during childhood. We believe in providing an expanded set of childcare options for parents, by providing flexibility in parental leave and childcare subsidies that each family can adapt to their own needs. We want to reduce financial and time pressures on hard working parents by guaranteeing every child access to a high quality, nutritious meal in school.

Pursuing excellence at third level

• Create a stronger apprenticeship programme
• Facilitate more PhD students
• Improve teacher training

Ireland’s tertiary education system is chronically underfunded. The Green Party would invest in revitalising our universities. Recognising that a university degree is not useful for all career paths, we would advocate for greatly enhancing our apprenticeship and technical education programmes.