After the executive's private meeting, CDU councillor Joana Rodrigues stated that, while valuing the city's role in daycare, it is important to hold the state accountable.

Mariana Ferreira Macedo, of the PSD, stated that the party, "both locally and nationally," has defended the importance of daycare centres and their free provision.

"We cannot, on the one hand, say we need more young people and then not provide them with the conditions to be in our city. Therefore, these conditions come from housing, support, and, of course, from having daycare centres. We cannot demand that young people today, before choosing to have children, must consider whether they can truly balance this with their work," she stated.

In the proposal, consulted by Lusa, Councilwoman Joana Rodrigues argues that it is necessary to expand public daycare spaces to all babies up to age 3 and wants the Government to identify state-owned buildings throughout the city of Porto and ensure the necessary investments to increase the number of spaces.

The CDU justifies the request to expand the public daycare network with the need to combat the demographic deficit and recalls that, according to the Centre for Planning and Evaluation of Public Policies, free daycare encounters "limitations in the availability of places in public facilities and IPSS (Social Solidarity Institutions), which restricts its universalisation" and that, at the district level, Porto "is one of the territories with the lowest daycare coverage relative to the resident population (35%)."

The councillor responsible for Education and Social Cohesion, Fernando Paulo, reported that the creation of 500 new daycare places is underway and shared that the government approved today, also unanimously, a proposal to create a support line for construction projects for social solidarity institutions that provide daycare services.

"Although this is a social response under the responsibility of social security, the government has also sought to encourage and support IPSS (Social Solidarity Institutions) to effectively invest in expanding the number of daycare centres," he said.