Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am pleased to update members on the progress made on the affordable child care scheme and, importantly, the success of the measures implemented by my Department since September to improve access to affordable, quality child care. When we last met some months ago, I outlined a series of measures that had been put in place in time for September 2017. These measures were aimed at reducing the cost of child care for families and improving access to quality child care for those families who need it most. They included, for the first time, a non-means tested universal subsidy of up to €1,040 per year for children under three years of age. They also included significantly increased targeted supports for families to assist with child care costs, facilitate return to education and employment and, where needed, intervention for children and families that need such support. The timeframe for the implementation of these measures was tight and relied in no small part on the co-operation and engagement of child care services throughout the country.

I am delighted to report that the measures have been a great success. To their credit, 88% of applicable child care services signed up to deliver these affordability measures. I recognised this effort and the administrative contribution made by child care services in delivering these changes by sanctioning an additional €3.5 million in non-contact time payments to child care services. This brings the total amount paid to early years care and education services in recognition of non-contact or administrative input to €18 million in 2017. I have secured €18 million in my base again for 2018 and onwards.

The information campaign to raise awareness of the new measures among parents has achieved its aims. Across the full suite of measures, as of 12 January, almost 66,000 of our estimated 70,000 children, or 94%, are now registered for supports. This number will continue to grow throughout the year as the door remains open for both parents and providers to sign up.

On the universal subsidy, of the 33,000 children estimated to be eligible, almost 31,000, or 94%, have registered to date. This means the families of almost 31,000 children are now gaining a financial benefit on par with what they will receive when the full affordable child care scheme launches.

On the targeted measures, slightly more than 35,000 children are benefiting across a range of schemes, receiving as much as €145 per child per week, which is a substantial increase on what was previously available.

Last April, I promised to ensure that the funds secured to provide these benefits would be delivered to families in 2017. I am delighted that, through the hard work of child care providers, with officials from my Department and Pobal, we have been able to fulfil that promise. I continue to encourage the small number of outstanding additional providers to sign up. I also encourage parents with children under three years in registered child care to apply for the universal subsidy, which can amount to the equivalent of six weeks free child care based on the average figures nationally. Parents can log onto our dedicated website, affordablechildcare.ie, or contact their local county child care committee for further information.

Alongside improvements to affordability, I am committed to ensuring that quality child care is also inclusive and accessible to all families. We have made good progress in achieving this objective. In the past three budgets, we secured a cumulative increase in the budget for early years of an unprecedented 80%. I also commissioned an independent review of the cost of delivering quality child care by the firm, Crowe Howarth. This report will be available by the end of the summer and will inform my proposals for further investment in the sector in budget 2019. I regularly remind the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Donohoe, of this.

We have taken tangible steps to make child care services more inclusive. Since its introduction in 2016, our access and inclusion model, AIM, has provided targeted supports to almost 5,000 children. Its universal measures have benefited thousands more and will continue to do so. Equality, diversity and inclusion training is being rolled out across the country and has now reached 2,750 early years staff. A total of 847 inclusion co-ordinators have received specialist qualifications under the leadership for inclusion programme and a further 857 early years staff have enrolled for the programme this year.

Packs of special sensory toys are about to be delivered to over 6,000 preschool rooms across the country, and training in practical skills, such as sign language, sensory integration and other specialised training is being offered free of charge to the services. We have also ended decades of uncertainty by commencing mandatory reporting as part of the full roll-out of the Children First Act 2015. These changes are child-centred and tangible, and will leave a legacy for our children and our society in the years to come.

While advancing these initiatives, we have also worked intensely on preparing the various components for the introduction of the fully-fledged affordable child care scheme, ACS. We have been working on the technical, administrative and legislative aspects, and I am happy to report that significant progress has been made in the scheme's development on each count. On the legislative components, the Childcare Support Bill 2017 was published on 12 December alongside a regulatory impact analysis of the scheme. The Bill is an essential element in the development of the affordable childcare scheme, ensuring that it operates on a robust, rigorous and transparent statutory footing. From the outset, I am very grateful to the committee for its participation in supporting moving it to that point. It also enables the sharing of data with the applicant's consent, which in turn facilitates a fast, user-friendly and innovative approach to automated assessment and approval of applications.

A key priority for me during the coming weeks and months will be to support the passage of the Childcare Support Bill 2017 through the Houses of the Oireachtas in a timely manner. The early passage of the legislation is important in order to limit potential risks to the information and communications technology, ICT, development timelines and costs for the scheme. This is because any potential changes that may arise during the legislative process could affect the requirements already set out for ICT development. The earlier the legislation is passed, the more security can be given regarding ICT development timelines.

Since announcing the creation of the ACS, I have been constant in my belief that the development of this system must meet the highest standards of scrutiny and testing so that it can form the basis for generations of investment in child care in Ireland. To this end, we submitted our plans for the development of the main IT system for the ACS to scrutiny by a peer review group at the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer, OGCIO. This is to ensure that we are meeting the best standards across a range of measures and that mistakes of previous national IT projects are not repeated. We passed the first stage of the peer review group process in September of last year. I am delighted to announce today that the OGCIO has now approved the request for tender, RFT, stage. The RFT stage is a critical one and has required intensive input from all parties to get it right.

Although it is great news that the RFT has now been approved, we have experienced some delays during this stage. Originally, we had proposed to procure the IT system via a framework agreement. However, after detailed legal scrutiny of this agreement by the Chief State Solicitor's office, we concluded that it was not suitable for this particular development and, accordingly, an alternative approach is now being progressed. This entails a full open tender procurement process which is, by its nature, lengthier and more complex than procuring services under a framework agreement. The Chief State Solicitor's office gave us priority and has worked intensively with us to ensure that a rigorous, quality procurement process is conducted in the shortest possible timeframe. My Department, in turn, is working closely with Pobal regarding the subsequent awarding and management of the contract.

Before I discuss the timeframe for the ACS, I would like to add a further point regarding the management of the project. It may be worth noting that the programme review group, PRG, has provided positive feedback on the quality of documentation provided and the project management and governance structures that have been established and are being implemented in the process of the development of the scheme. The PRG also confirmed its positive views on data protection measures planned for the ACS. In regard to administrative and other components, I note that other aspects of the scheme’s general development, such as governance frameworks, data protection policies and procedures, communications strategies and administrative arrangements are also progressing as planned.

While much has been achieved, it is not possible to set out a definitive timeline for the scheme’s launch at this time. As I discussed with the committee previously, this is because the timeframe is dependent upon ICT development. We will publish the RFT in the next couple of days. Once we have completed this stage of the IT element of the project and have the successful developer in place, we will be able to confirm and communicate a timeline for the full introduction of the scheme. I am committed to updating colleagues on this as soon as possible. However, given the predetermined timelines involved in an open tender process, I can confirm that the present suite of supports for families, that is, the measures introduced last September, will continue in September 2018.

The introduction of the full ACS marks a radical redesign of the legal and technical infrastructure underpinning the government’s subvention of child care in this country. The scheme will provide a flexible, sustainable and high-quality platform for future investment and for future generations. It is, therefore, a system that deserves to be robustly designed and developed and rigorously tested to ensure we get it right the first time and that it serves us well over the long-term. Families in Ireland and providers of early years care and education deserve no less. While we continue this critical work, I want to remind the committee that the vast majority of those who will be eligible for support via the ACS when the full website and all the other aspects are in place are already receiving comparable supports through the interim measures put in place by my Department from last September. In other words, I have sought to fast-track many of the benefits of the ACS without compromising on the rigour and time needed to develop and launch this landmark new scheme.

Budget 2018 also enabled a focus on quality measures, as outlined previously, including an increase to early childhood care and education, ECCE, capitation from September of this year to further support early years providers. I will be happy to answer any questions.