Simon Harris
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
And it is my job to make sure there's capacity.
And I don't think there's going to be just one size fits all.
So in fairness, considering you told me this wasn't spent enough money and then you told me not to spend all the money, I can't go through every line of the budget or potential budget.
What I am saying is childcare will be a priority in the budget.
And there's a clear view right across government in relation to that.
And I would hope we can make progress towards that in the budget in October.
But the commitment is 200 euro per child per month in the lifetime of the government.
That's the written commitment.
So it's genuinely not in any way linked to protest because we've been working on this for quite a sustained period of time.
But it is about fairness.
I mean, people from Ukraine are very welcome to this country.
People from Ukraine are making a really positive contribution to this country.
Let me just say that.
They're in our schools, Ukrainian children.
They're working in our economy.
I really want to say that we stand with Ukraine.
We're proud to stand with Ukraine and people from Ukraine are very welcome.
We do also, though, have to kind of regularize things here.
We can't continue to spend billions of euro, billions of euro on accommodation.
We can't continue to have a situation, and I say this really respectfully, but where people who are working in our country aren't paying any rent.