Ms Teresa Heeney:

I will try to address some of the issues and maybe ask some of my colleagues to come in on some of them. There is no doubt that many services operate riskily. There is not enough margin to reinvest in their service and we hear constantly from our members about issues like entering into agreements with the Revenue Commissioners. In respect of delayed payments through the programmes implementation platform, PIP, system, the committee is lucky it does not have to interact with the PIP system because it drives demented those members, such as Ms Hilliard, who do have to deal with it. It is basically the infrastructure with which they must interact to log the details. It is a huge system. Too frequently, there are delays in payments or a provider expecting a payment of €5,000 might get €2,500 and does not know why. Those things have a significant impact where people do not have the money to pay their staff because there are no margins. They are down at the credit union trying to get bridging loans to pay staff. I think Ms Hilliard will probably be able to speak more to that. The idea of it being marginal is very real. Any blip in the system has a huge impact. A member was in touch with us last week. Her payment was delayed and the Revenue Commissioners put an attachment order on to the payment. This meant that they did not want to pay the provider because there was an attachment order on the payment. They are very real-life issues for these people who, let us not forget, are delivering a service on behalf of the Government. They are doing something under a contract with the Government.

There is no added incentive for all of the people working in this sector to continue to upskill and increase their qualifications. Early Childhood Ireland carried out a survey of qualifications in the sector last year. We now think the average hourly rate of pay is in the region of €10 to €11 per hour but it goes up to €12 if someone is a graduate. For anybody with a calculator, €12 per hour, 15 hours per week, 38 weeks of the year might get you a salary of about €7,500 per annum. Nobody with a degree will want that job. There is no hope of car loan, mortgage or any of those things. They are the essential issues we must think about because it is so important that we retain the best quality staff working in these services, as Deputy Jan O'Sullivan pointed out in respect of trying to become comparable with primary schools.

The question about capacity is important. We have to take an informed view about what this affordable child care scheme will do to capacity. The data are available. I believe the Department of Education and Skills has all of the data that are required to be able to develop a capacity plan for the sector. We could probably also do an assessment of where we think the ratios of parents' choice will shift. At present, about 40% of parents use relative care, if you want to call it that. About 30% of parents use a more formal childminding arrangement and about 30% used centre-based services. The challenge in the first instance is to make the single affordable child care scheme available to parents who use centre-based services and formal childminding arrangements. Relative care is a bit more tricky from a constitutional point of view, probably in terms of what is seen to be a private arrangement. In respect of planning for capacity, the Department of Children and Youth Affairs has taken a point of view informed by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission that it is a private sector and a private market and that it cannot interfere in what is seen to be a private market. I use that word in a legalistic way. We have long taken the view that we could get another barrister who would give us another point of view because I think the Government must take a point of view on provision and ensuring all the services operate in a way that does not displace others, is sustainable and available to parents and does not promote anything approaching prices going up. As an aside, I would say that the cost of providing child care must go up quite substantially because the current costs are being delivered on the back of very poor wages. The cost of provision must go up pretty dramatically. Obviously, this cannot be passed on to parents. Ms Hilliard might want to say something about fees, demand and whether fees might go up because of the scheme.