Ms Ciairín de Buis:

I thank the joint committee for giving me the opportunity to discuss the very crucial issues around affordability and quality in children's early care and education. Most members are families with Start Strong, but for those who are not, it is a coalition of organisations, with approximately 50 in the group, seeking to advance children’s early care and education. We work from a children’s rights perspective.

Young children are the politicians, farmers, teachers, carers, doctors, builders, artists, economists, nurses and entrepreneurs of the future. They are our most precious natural resource and their future rests with us. We owe it to them to give them the very best possible start in life, which is why we need to look at the issue through the lens of children's education and what will provide the best outcomes for children. Children’s early years are a crucial time and it is that early educational experience that has most impact on their learning throughout their lives. Quality early care and education give children the learning experience they will carry through their lives, laying the foundations for lifelong learning. It is much more than glorified babysitting or minding children, as it is part of the start of education.

There is a strong economic argument for public expenditure in early childhood that rests on its benefits for children. Longitudinal studies have shown that high quality services for young children can bring significant benefits for children's welfare, development, educational attainment and a range of long-term outcomes. It is an investment that makes sense; in addition to it being the right thing to do, it is an economically sound investment with strong returns. Despite the importance of early education and strong returns on such an economic investment, Ireland does not have a history of investing a major amount of public money in it. The cost of early education has been correctly highlighted by the Donegal committee and it is largely met by parents. Often the costs are unattainable and like a second mortgage or even in excess of a mortgage. They can be unaffordable and often lead to parents having to make a Hobson’s choice not to work because they cannot afford to do so. According to the OECD, Ireland invests only 0.4% of GDP annually in child care and early education services compared with an OECD average of 0.7%. To just reach average OECD expenditure, the Government would need to invest an additional €450 million a year in children’s early care and education. We would have to invest the same amount again to reach the 1% of GDP benchmark recognised as the level of annual investment required to achieve high quality early education.

I have mentioned that research has demonstrated the significant impact of early learning and its effect on a child’s life. There have been two significant findings of this research. The first relates to the long-term impact and how early education affects how we, in turn, do in school, whether we go to third level and, ultimately, our work life and the types of career we have. A second key finding is that early education only has this impact when it is of high quality. Poor quality care means that not only do children not benefit but that they can also be harmed by these experiences. The most effective way to ensure services are of good quality is for the Government to invest money directly into services rather than channelling it through tax breaks. Greater direct investment in services would ensure there would be control of quality, equitable access, training and the co-ordination of services. Where there is "demand-side" funding such as tax-free allowances, in the likes of the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, they are judged to have lower quality services, as can be seen in the UNICEF league table. Ironically, the services tend to be less affordable for parents, as indicated by the OECD in its examination of child care and early education costs.

We have a huge challenge ahead of us if we are to provide high quality early care and education services which are accessible to and affordable for everybody. The free preschool year is great and has significantly improved access, with 94% in the age cohort accessing it.

However, it lasts for 38 weeks and is available for only one year before school entry. Some children do not get to avail of it until they are four or almost four. The other two schemes, the community child care subvention scheme and the child care education and training support, CETS, scheme, assist many families but they are not available everywhere, and many families who need financial support are not eligible.

We very much welcome the fact that the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs has said there will be a review of these two schemes. We in Start Strong believe that the review should be much broader than focusing exclusively on these two schemes. It needs to look at affordability and quality, and how we can ensure that quality and affordability are the two sides of the one coin. We need to ensure that all children, regardless of where they live or how much their parents earn, can access high-quality early care and education services that will give them the best start in life.

We know there is good practice and there are high quality services in Ireland. We also know there are examples of really poor practice, and that poor practice can result in children suffering harm. I am conscious that later this morning the committee will look at the "Prime Time" investigation, "A Breach of Trust," six months on. The programme focused on three privately operated full-day crèches. It made clear that the causes and the risks were systemic. At the same time, it showed that public funds have gone into services where quality standards are low or questionable, including through the free preschool year. We need to make sure that no child is in a low-quality early care and education service. We cannot stand over a situation where public money is going to services that are of poor quality. Recently, steps have been taken to ensure improvements in quality, including legislating for minimum qualifications in the workforce, increasing the sanctions for non-compliance, putting inspection reports online, and moving to establish a national quality support service. However, they are just first steps in tackling the scale of the issue we face.

We must significantly add to the public investment that has been made. In particular, we must support the professionalisation of the workforce. Professionalisation is critical because the research evidence shows that high quality adult-child interactions are most consistently found where those working with children are highly qualified and where wages are sufficiently high to ensure there is not a high staff turnover and to reward staff for the investment they make. If we think back to our school days, most of us can probably remember one teacher that stood out, who was there for us, pushed us, challenged us and tried to ensure we did the best we could. We need to make sure that the same type of person works in the early care and education services. It is difficult to do that within a model in which those employed in the area, including those with graduate qualifications, quite often earn little more than the minimum wage, are on short-term contracts and are often released during the summer months when funding for the free preschool year has been stopped. It is no wonder staff can often be stressed and unsupported. It is essential when considering affordability that we do not keep building on this system. We need to take a much broader look at affordability and quality. We need to use public funding and public investment as a lever in terms of achieving high quality. When the free preschool year was introduced, some limited steps were taken in that regard. For example, there is a higher capitation grant for services that employ qualified graduates, and contractual requirements that participating services would have minimum standards in staff qualifications. Those were significant steps, but they are limited in the sense that there is an entire world of early care and education outside of the free preschool year. The Government must do more.

We very much welcome the ongoing political commitment to maintain the free preschool year and, ultimately, to extend its scope to a second free preschool year, subject to quality standards being met. Outside of that, we need to ensure that parents can access high-quality services and avail of flexible work solutions so that they can find an affordable solution that works for their families - including unemployed families - and not just those in low-paid employment. That means public investment beyond what is currently available.

A fantastic opportunity is presented in terms of the committee focusing on children's early care and education. What we need to bear in mind is that the early years are a crucial time. They lay the foundations for lifelong learning. Despite the long-term economic returns, we do not have huge public investment in early care and education. We need to ensure that quality is critical. If we do not build quality into the system we will not have the economic returns and children will not have huge impacts in terms of their life chances. It will be a case of building on the existing model. The international evidence suggests the most effective way to ensure both quality and access is through supply-side universal funding schemes of the type seen in the free preschool year. We need to review affordability. The fact that the schemes are being reviewed is very welcome but we need to have a much broader review of affordability and we need to ensure that quality is a critical and crucial aspect of the system. We need to move to a situation in which we have increased quality so that we can move to a second free preschool year and there is further investment to ensure income is not a barrier to children accessing high-quality early care and education services.