Ms Teresa Heeney:

Early Childhood Ireland welcomes the invitation to be here today and congratulates the committee on its decision to prepare a report on child care at this critical time.

It is fitting that it is this committee and not the committee for stabilising the economy, the committee to get women back to the workforce, or the committee to address poverty and deprivation that is considering the issue. This committee focuses on the needs and rights of our children and the type of childhood we want for them. That, first and foremost, must be the focus of any plan or vision for early childhood education in Ireland.

The committee's report must be about ensuring quality. To do that, it must ensure that significant public investment is added into this sector and goes directly into services rather than any form of tax credits. My colleague Ciairín is going to talk about that later and give examples of how tax credits do not work in this context. A child-focused plan will listen to the incontrovertible evidence that children do better if they spend at least their first year with their parent. We must invest in the extension of leave arrangements to ensure that children can be with a parent for at least the first year of their lives.

A child-focused plan would ensure that all children attending settings have access to the supports they need to make the most of that time. That includes children in our most disadvantaged areas who need and deserve more than services which are obliged to hire community employment staff due to the lack of funding. It includes children with additional needs who have virtually no access to special needs assistants in their preschool and therefore often cannot access their entitlement as the service cannot accommodate them. It includes children under the age of three whose parents currently receive virtually no support when it comes to paying for the cost of their child care. It includes children in child minding settings, the vast bulk of which are unregulated and therefore totally uninspected, as well as children in after-school settings which are also unregulated and therefore uninspected. It also includes the parents of all of these children, who rightfully expect that they should not have to pay the full cost of child care themselves, amounting to an average 34% of their income, double that of their European counterparts.

The committee's report must also call for a viable system for all operators of early childhood education. We have an example of the current free preschool year or ECCE contract, which is not fit for purpose for operators in many ways. The current capitation level does not cover costs and does not allow a sufficient margin for any additional bills or costs. There is no doubt that many early childhood settings are trading recklessly. Consider the setting in Waterford required to build a sleep room for compliance. The operator has been paying the builder €400 every month for the past three years and will be paying this for another five years. That service made a net loss of €3,000 last year. The current capitation levels allow for no planning or development of a service due to its unpredictability. We know owner-managers of most services often take no salary and have no access to income at all over the summer, while staff in many services are required to go on the dole over the summer.

We have advocated for years about commercial rates being charged on early childhood education settings and the cost of that to them. Just last evening we received a call from a member who owns a small service in Limerick where a revaluation has recently been completed. Her commercial rates bill will go from €4,200 in 2014 to €9,500 in 2015. Another woman I spoke with last Friday in Sligo is about to be sued by her council as she has not paid rates in six years. Her rates bill is €30,000. The money is not in anybody's account to pay those kinds of bills. The bottom line is that the free preschool year contract must be renegotiated and made fit for purpose before a second year can be contemplated. I would welcome more questions on this and would certainly like to see reference to it in the committee's report.

The committee's report must also call for planning to ensure sustainability. The Department of Education and Skills has a planning document clearly setting out the requirements for schools for the next 15 years, which is available on its website. The Department of Children and Youth Affairs must develop the same document and construct a plan for its achievement with all stakeholders. Currently, the lack of a clear plan is leading to duplication and poor sustainability. Settings are expected to take on the risk of developing and building their facilities but the current policy of unplanned expansion is resulting in an oversupply, which Pobal estimates stands at 31,000 available places currently in Ireland.

Expansion must be planned and monitored to ensure existing settings can predict their viability year on year.

The sector is a sizeable employer, employing approximately 25,000 women who, on average, earn approximately €10 per hour. Let me give the committee two examples. Let us consider a young woman who has a level 7 degree and assume that the setting in which she works receives for her the higher capitation rate for the free preschool year. That is her role for 15 hours a week. In the afternoon the only other role the setting can offer her is that of cleaner which she has taken on because her morning salary is insufficient. Let us consider another young woman with whom we spoke two weeks ago who has a level 8 honours degree in early childhood education. She is working in a setting in the morning and her part-time job is in a chipper which wants her to work more hours on a higher salary than the setting is prepared to offer her. A wage for a person like her, working 15 hours a week at €10 an hour for 38 weeks of the year, amounts to €5,700 per annum. These staff are unlikely to be offered a car loan, much less a mortgage. Therefore, we see the sector being bled dry of their expertise and experience. We need 52 week contracts with professional salaries that provide for CPD planning and preparation time for all those involved for it to be viable as a quality sector.

I thank the committee for listening and welcome any question that may arise.