Dr. Mary Moloney:

It is so heartening to be part of a discussion in which people are being exceptionally honest and frank on the issues that have led us to the crossroads that we are at today. My particular interest in representing PLÉ is around training, qualifications and remuneration. All of the members have acknowledged the difficulties in their own ways. Deputy Troy is absolutely correct that there are issues with regard to those who are on level 5 and 6 training courses. It would be remiss of any of us to leave today without saying that those operating at levels 5 and 6 are to a large extent doing an incredible job in very difficult circumstances. Deputy McLellan asked why a person with a degree - a level 7 or 8 qualification - would stay in the sector. I could equally ask why somebody with a level 5 or 6 qualification would remain in the sector. Nobody within the sector is earning a living wage and it behoves all of us to fight for proper salaries and conditions.

I have an issue with the fact that the minimum qualification requirement was postponed for 12 months. I think we were talking about 3,000 people in the sector who will not have their qualification this coming September. In a sector in which 25,000 people are at work, that is quite a small number, and an interim measure could very easily have been put in place to take account of those people. As I understand it, the worry is that inspectors going into a child care facility will not be able to make a judgment because people do not have their qualifications. I share the concerns about inspections in the sector. We have a preschool quality agenda, and the more I think about the preschool quality agenda the more frustrated I get, because the focus of that agenda seems to be solely on inspection. There are many people - as a parent, I am one of them - who have recently seen their children through the leaving certificate examination. My son could not have sat that examination without the preparation and study that went in beforehand for a five-year period. Under the preschool quality agenda we are sending inspectors to inspect child care facilities against Síolta and Aistear standards. That will be the premise of the new-education focused inspections. Yet we are not building the capacity within the sector. We are setting the sector up for failure. Many members have used terms such as "putting the cart before the horse," meaning that we addressed the wrong end. We are again in danger of addressing the wrong end. I am absolutely in favour of inspection by the Department of Education and Skills.

That is a step in the right direction. For too long we have been investing in bricks and mortar, space, air vents, dust and adult-child ratios, all of which are important aspects of quality but the processes in settings, the way we engage with the children, the relationships with children and how we nurture the children are the critical elements that can be benchmarked against Síolta and Aistear. Mr. Joe Rynn and Ms Avril McMonagle have said, and I have said it repeatedly myself in my presentation, that those frameworks remain optional. Six years on from the Aistear framework, it is still an optional framework in early childhood education, with one exception where it is mandatory for the free preschool year. Nine years on from its publication, Síolta remains optional within settings. What are we at? If there was a political will - it sounds trite and inconceivable in a way that with the stroke of a pen the Government can enact both those frameworks - they would become mandatory. In that scenario, everybody who is training educators for the sector would be mandated immediately for the frameworks to become part and parcel of training the length and breadth of Ireland. We do it in the higher education institutions.

Deputy Mitchell O'Connor asked about the 27 degree courses. There are 18 institutions and some offer level 7 and level 8 courses, which immediately means there are two degree programmes in those institutions. The other element is that different institutions will have a different focus. Some will be very focused on outdoor play. Some, depending on the background of the people operating within it, will look very much on social care, as they come from that model. I am a lecturer in early childhood studies in Mary Immaculate College, where we embed Síolta and Aistear from year one right through to the end of year four. Each degree has its own particular focus.

There has been much mention of whether we are looking at education or at care. One of the major issues in the sector for the past 15 years is that we have never had a national discussion about the purpose of early childhood education. Is it education or is it care? Some people have argued and continue to argue that what we have done effectively is to create holding centres for children while their parents work. That is a very sobering thought because we have not given enough thought to what happens within the settings. We have an ideal opportunity as we are at a crossroads. We have very hard decisions to make, not political decisions and not as members rightly put it, throwing good money after bad. We can make very good decisions about the future.

Many members will remember the White Paper on Early Childhood Education in 1999 and the inextricable link which we said could not be separated as one cannot have care without education or one cannot have education without care. If I pick up a six month old baby in my arms and nurture that baby, the baby is learning from me. It is education in its broadest sense. If I set up an environment that is welcoming for a young baby or young child, what is the child learning from that environment and what is the child learning from my responses? It is education in its broadest sense at that very young age. We need staff with those skills who know how to nurture. I spoke this morning on "Newstalk" about a baby of six months old babbling and cooing, the very beginning of communication and language development. That is education but it is also care because of how we respond. There are so many issues, but we have an opportunity to get this right.

Deputy Troy mentioned tax credits. I do not subscribe to the notion that tax credits would increase child care fees. There is no evidence that this has happened in any other jurisdiction. I am of the opinion, and I share Mr. Joe Rynn's opinion, that tax credits as an interim measure with other measures would get us out of the quagmire that we are in at present. We need to enact Síolta and Aistear. We need a dedicated training fund for the sector. Mr. Rynn rightly states that people are going out at night and at the weekend to work on the minimum wage to pay for their training and upskilling. Many of the students who sit before me at third level are struggling to get through college because we know the recession has hit them badly. I meet students in our cafeteria on Monday morning and their treat for the week is a coffee in Starbucks. We are not talking about anybody who is making big money out of child care. My students tell me that they stick with it because they want to be the best educators they can be. They want to give children the best opportunities and I salute them for doing that.

I do not salute a sector which continually states we must do it for free. That is effectively what we are doing. The committee has asked repeatedly why Ireland has the highest child care costs. I ask the members in turn what do other jurisdictions have where there is the Rolls Royce model? There was a lady from Sweden on the radio yesterday morning. What does Sweden have that we do not have? Its taxation rate is 30%. Anybody in Ireland will tell the committee that when we add in USC, PRSI and PAYE, we pay 52% tax on our salaries. We ask parents to pay an additional 35% on child care out of their net income. We are not investing. We do not recognise it as the social service that it is and we do not see the savings.

Mr. James Heckman has been quoted in the Houses before. There is a €16 or €17 return on every euro invested. We know that if we invest in early childhood, we stave off issues in the long term. We prevent people going into prison at a very young age. Our young children are our future and it behoves us now to make decisions on what is best for their futures. All of us sitting here may not want to make the hard decisions, but when we retire in ten, 15 or 20 years, the young children we are depriving now will be the nurses, doctors and teachers who will be responsible for our care. We must make proper decisions now to ensure a future for Ireland.