Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That would be welcome. As Minister for Children and Youth Affairs and as somebody who has worked, as have many members of the committee, for many years to develop a child care service that both presenters this morning would like to see, we are very familiar with the issues and many people around the table have done much work on these issues, including myself, over the years. Clearly, there are new and ongoing challenges. It is interesting that when there was a good deal of money around we chose to put it into direct cash payments which are important for families, but we did not make the kind of investment that other countries made in affordable accessible child care. That is the focus of the discussion here. How do we now play catch-up and how do we deal with this issue which is impacting on so many families? It is not simply about talking about it, it is about taking action.

The action I have taken is to have €180 million in the preschool year last year, €80 million on the targeted schemes and, €4.5 million, for the first time ever, as a direct budget line to work on training and mentoring issues which the sector has identified as critical. We are in the process of developing those training and mentoring schemes involving a huge amount of consultation with the sector. For example, on the development of the mentoring scheme all of the child care committees from around the country have been represented at meetings and the voluntary sector has also come together to discuss what type of mentoring scheme it would like to see. We will have 30 or 40 mentors in place in the next few months to begin to go into child care services and support them in terms of quality. That is the method that works. For the first time we have that money in a budget for mentoring and training. During the Celtic tiger the issues of accessibility and affordability were not dealt with to the degree they needed to be dealt with. That is the legacy that I and the Government have to deal with and on which we have to move forward.

Some of the questions were about resources. It is a resource question in terms of developing the schemes that are suitable and will reach the families we are discussing. That is the reason the review is important. It has started internally in the Department. I want to examine how we can develop those schemes, whether they need to be integrated into one scheme which would deal with some of the issues raised members of the committee and the providers this morning, or developed in an incremental way. I can come back to the committee at a later stage to discuss the review as it develops. I am aware that people in the sector wish to contribute. I do not want it to be a long review. I want to get recommendations in fairly quickly. I want to examine the schemes as they develop for the future in order that they can complement the development of the free preschool year and, hopefully, a second year although it would cost approximately €180 million extra. Everybody has agreed we should not move to a second year until we deal with the quality issues. My focus this year is on those quality issues so that the sector is prepared and able to move towards a second year and the expansion we have been talking about. There is a range of challenges from a resource point of view and from a quality qualifications point of view but we are responding to those as I have outlined.

With regard to the general point Deputy Byrne made on parental and maternity leave, the early years strategy that we will be working on and publishing this year will address the issue. The Deputy is absolutely correct that we need to be examining shared leave, the role of fathers and access to leave for fathers.

The Deputy referred to extending maternity leave. As a Deputy, I remember tabling an amendment to social welfare legislation to increase the amount of maternity leave. An extension was provided for at the time I tabled it. The period has been extended fairly significantly over the years. Any further extension will have considerable resource implications; there is no question about that. However, we have moved fairly dramatically from a position in which there was but a couple of weeks' maternity leave to the current position.