Ms Ciairín de Buis:

A crucial point is looking at the child to ensure he or she can access high quality services. Ireland has shamefully high levels of child poverty in Ireland which has a long-term, lifelong, impact on children’s educational attainment and employment prospects. That is why we are arguing that we need to examine this area. We need to ensure that quality and affordability of child care are taken together. As Deputy Troy said, they are not exclusive. No one would argue that we should be looking at one without looking at the other.

If we look at international research and the OECD report, those countries which have high quality services do not have tax credits in place as the primary source of funding. In fact, these countries have provision directly into services because it is not seen as an employment aid but a children’s education issue.

One of the key points to remember is that the poverty that has the most impact on children is where parents are unemployed. Those children need to access high quality services. Tax breaks to their parents will do nothing for those children who need to access high quality care and education services.

Some pointed out that while we would all love to have universal services for all children from an early age, we need to look at the State’s finances. We are not saying the two are exclusive.

Start Strong is saying we need to move from the existing free preschool to a second free preschool year and to have income-related subsidies outside that because it needs to be much more than that.

We were asked what happens in other countries and where the good models are. The Scandinavian model is often touted. There is no Scandinavian model. It varies across the Nordic countries, but common to those countries is a very high level of professionalism, funding incentives and caps on the funding which can be income-related, either an absolute cap on what parents pay or a percentage of their incomes. In New Zealand there are incentives to employ a higher level of graduates across all the services. They have what they call the free 20 hours. It is similar to our free preschool year but they have it over a longer period. They also subsidise services outside that free provision to ensure as many graduates as possible are employed and that all the services are high quality. It is addressing the issue of quality and affordability.

One of the issues that arose is where the money is going because the costs are so high here. The costs are high here to parents. It is not that the costs in other countries are significantly lower, it is that parents are not paying the costs because the individual governments across the various countries are making that investment. It is not that the costs are particularly high here, the distinction is who we expect to pay them.

Start Strong has been very much to the fore in campaigning to ensure childminders come within regulation. If schemes are put in place they need to include childminders as far as possible. Most childminders are unregulated. While there are incentives through the tax allowances for childminders, most childminders are not in a position to be regulated because they are not subject to regulation unless they care for four or more children. For those who choose to voluntarily notify, which is higher in Donegal than in many other counties, the supports are decreasing due to cutbacks. Many childminders who may wish voluntarily to notify, find that they cannot because there is nobody in the child care committee who can take on that role or the training is not available because those supports have been cut back. While it is a linked issue and needs to be taken as part of quality and affordability, we also need to bear in mind the position childminders are in.

Quality and affordability need to addressed together, not one versus the other. We need to retain that focus on the child. On Senator van Turnhout's point, we would not ask these questions about schools because we do not see schools as labour market supports but as children's education. We need to take the same approach to children's early care and education and approach it from the perspective of what is best for the child's educational attainment and outcomes.