Ms Teresa Heeney:

I thank the Chairman, Vice Chairman and other members of the committee for their invitation to speak about the new affordable child care scheme, which we will call ACS for the purposes of our conversation. It is a little shorter.

Early Childhood Ireland's policy and advocacy work is underpinned by the belief that quality for children, sustainability for both child care service providers and their staff, and affordability for parents are the three essential, interconnected pillars of a robust, functioning and desirable child care system. As such, for ACS to work it must address quality, sustainability and affordability together, and not one without the other.

Early Childhood Ireland welcomes the development of the ACS, which represents a significant change to the current structure of State-funded child care supports.We welcome the amalgamation of existing targeted child care programmes into a single, streamlined and, it is hoped, more user-friendly scheme. However, we think it is a mistake that the free preschool years are not yet incorporated into the scheme from the outset, though we understand the reasons behind that.

We welcome the principle of progressive universalism whereby ACS encompasses both universal and targetedelements that can be increased over time as additional State investment becomes available and where families and children in most need receive the greatest financial support.

We welcome the scheme’s stated objectives to promote a reduction in child poverty, positive child development outcomes, labour market activation and improved quality. However, it does not appear to Early Childhood Ireland that the focus of the scheme reflects the priorities in this order or that the scheme as currently proposed is capable of addressing all the objectives.

We believe that improved quality as a stated objective should be connected to the second objective of improving child development outcomes, particularly as the two are intrinsically linked.

Getting the cost model right from the start is imperative to the success of the scheme for children, families and operators and for the survival of the early years sector. Early Childhood Ireland is concerned that the affordable care scheme, ACS, is being rolled out before an independent review of the cost of providing quality child care in private and community settings consistent with the principle of ongoing professionalisation of the sector, as per A Programme for A Partnership Government commitment in May 2016, is conducted and published. This is regrettable, given that the cost model being used to calculate the targeted subsidies is based on the current unacceptable status quowhereby the majority of the sector is breaking even at best and the workforce is highly professional, low paid and employed on a part-time, 38-week basis. Maintaining this status quowill do nothing to improve the sustainability of services, expand those services or help the poor pay and conditions of staff, which has led to a staffing crisis whereby our members cannot recruit or retain the staff needed to comply with the regulatory requirements in the sector, never mind to expand. This crisis is being witnessed daily and our members' expansion in line with the introduction of the second free preschool year is being curtailed.

This should be a scheme for children with their best interests at the core of its design. Instead, it feels overwhelmingly like a scheme for and, in terms of labour market activation, about parents. Labour market activation appears to be the overarching consideration in the development of the targeted subsidy.

I hope the committee will indulge me in going off my submitted script and reverting to something that we heard at this morning's first session. We were concerned to learn that the automated part of the scheme as regards the targeted approach will not be ready for September. I must emphasise that this is a major issue. The introduction of ACS is a key aspect of the development of Ireland's child care infrastructure. We have gone from the potential of having a win-win scheme to the significant risk that parents' expectations will be raised by a communications plan and cannot be delivered upon by the scheme. We must be cautious about a communications plan around a scheme that is not ready so that it does not become a failed expectation or experiment at the outset.

We welcome the change from a 48-week a 52-week funding model, which we had suggested from the start, and we will continue to advocate on issues of concern to our members, many of whom we will probably hear about at this meeting. These issues are: the hourly subsidy and hourly fee; the assumption around parents' access to and competency with computers and technology; the administrative burden on services; the requirement on providers to police absences and changes in child care provision; and, most importantly, the inadequate cost model from the outset with no consideration for professionalisation.

We are scrutinising the heads of the Bill, the general scheme of the ACS and the revised FAQs and we look forward to working with the committee and the wider Oireachtas membership so as to ensure robust legislative scrutiny and that the scheme, when commenced, represents a move towards a model of child care that can deliver the best quality for children in their formative years, viability and sustainability for early years services and their staff, and access and affordability for parents to child care facilities and services.