Parents are still having to pay the equivalent of a second mortgage in childcare fees, the Sinn Féin leader has said.

Mary Lou McDonald said the childcare sector requires increased investment in order to bring down fees dramatically for parents.

Childcare professionals must also get the wages they deserve, Ms McDonald told the Dáil.

"The first step has to be to increase the affordability and accessibility of childcare services," she said.

She asked if Government will deliver on a commitment to cut childcare fees by another 25% in the Budget.

Responding, the Taoiseach said the protest today by a "minority of childcare providers" is not warranted and has inconvenienced parents.

Leo Varadkar said the Government wants to make childcare affordable, more available and to raise quality and standards.

"Exactly how much we can allocate to each of those objectives will be decided between now and Budget day," he said.

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Labour leader Ivana Bacik has accused the Government of being "irresponsible verging on reckless" when it comes to pay negotiations with workers in community and voluntary sector organisations, which are funded by the Health Service Executive and other State agencies.

She told the Dáil that these workers provide "essential services," but the Government seems to have washed its hands of responsibility for an impasse in the talks which, she contended, had left disability and homelessness services "near collapse".

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) has threated to take indefinite strike action from Tuesday 17 October strike, following ballots carried out by Fórsa, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation and SIPTU.

In reply, Mr Varadkar said that threat of legal action was a "real concern", both for the Government and those people who rely on such services.

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Mr Varadkar said it should be noted that the Government are not the employers and do not determine pay rates in this case, but he accepted the State has "a role to play" given it is the main funder.

He noted that there was a 5% pay rise on offer, along with a 3% backdated to last April, and a commitment to engage with the sector again if public sector pay talks reach agreement.

Deputy Bacik claimed it was a "cop out" for the Taoiseach to say that the Government is not the employer, adding that the link to payrates given by the HSE employees doing the same work needed to be restored.

She said her party had put down a motion last year, which was passed by Dáil, but the government had "done nothing since then".

Broadcasting charge 'fraught with difficulty'

Mr Varadkar also told the Dáil that introducing a household broadcasting charge would be "fraught with difficulty".

He said that said that it "would be a difficult one to go for", adding that if it were introduced, it "would have to continue to exempt a very large number of households... as is the case now".

He also noted concerns over the power that introducing Exchequer funding for RTÉ would give to the executive.

Additional reporting Paul Cunningham