Ms Mary McLoughlin:

There is an issue about how we apply the resources. There are approximately 20 services that would like to come into the community child care subvention, CCS, programme but if we allow in more applicants, we will be spreading the places more thinly and there could be a negative impact. When there are more resources, we hope to consider areas where there are no current community services as a priority. As the Minister noted, we would examine those in conjunction with county child care committees. We recognise the importance of affordable child care and the benefits for both parents and children. Currently, we spend approximately €40 million on the CCS and the difficulty has been with the economic downturn, there are more parents seeking access. We have tried to target those people most in need in allocating our places. If it were possible to get more resources, it would be a major benefit to the schemes.

Over the next year or two we intend to review the targeted schemes. We have school-age child care process and CCS, as well as the child care employment and training support scheme, CETS. There are some anomalies and difficulties with how they are implemented, so working with both the voluntary and county child care committees, we intend to review those processes and have something by the end of the year that we could implement for the following academic year.

Deputy Troy mentioned the community employment schemes and we recognise the difficulty in that regard. Where people were taking up child care community employment schemes to get the double benefit, we were not necessarily getting people with an interest in child care. We are working with the Department of Social Protection to develop a more career-focused community employment scheme so that people can make a choice to go into child care and have a very real career in it. We hope that will attract people in some of the smaller projects that have been effective, with people being given a very clear message about what could be a career path. That is as opposed to just turning up at a child care scheme. We hope that will both encourage people to participate and improve the quality of services.

With regard to rates, we met recently representatives of the Department of Finance and the Valuation Office, raising the general views of child care providers. In the end, it is a Government decision as to how rates will be applied generally but the officials are well aware of the issues. With regard to the number of children taking up the preschool scheme, the rate has consistently been in the region of 95%, or between 94% and 96%. The evidence is that in general, it takes in children of all backgrounds, and the small percentage of children who are not there include the 3,000 who were in the Early Start programme and children with very complex disabilities who may not be able to participate in a scheme. Some children are home schooled and there are a number of other small groups. There is no bloc of children from a particular background that is excluded.

The county child care committees go out when there is an issue. One local co-ordinator I know knocks on doors of homes where she feels people may not take up the scheme so that they have the chance to participate. There is no evidence that there is a bloc of disadvantaged children who do not participate, and that is a benefit in the scheme.