Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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I wish to make a couple of remarks myself, if I may. It is fair to say that in building on the initiatives of recent years, including the free scheme, tremendous progress has been made in the relatively recent past on which the Minister and her Department must be commended. Moving us away from having the most expensive child care service in Europe towards having one of the most affordable systems for both parents and the State is entirely positive. I am heartened to hear that funding is in place for next year for the existing arrangements on affordable child care. I would operate on the assumption that such funding is guaranteed until such time as the universal child care subsidies are in place, although ultimately that is a matter for Dáil Éireann. The expenditure commitments that I would like to see are very important to that overall objective, as the Minister herself has inferred on a number of occasions.

One such commitment to which I wish to draw attention is a percentage of GDP target or average. In the area of overseas development aid, for instance, there is a long-standing commitment to commit a certain percentage of our GDP to overseas aid which we have failed miserably to reach, repeatedly. Indeed, we have not even come near to reaching it. In terms of the overall objectives of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, this committee and the Government, I would like to see us spelling out our commitments with regard to how we propose to afford to get ourselves to a reasonable level of per capitaspending on child care services and the importance of doing same, not just in terms of a conducive environment for children but also in terms of facilitating parents to do other things, whether that be education, work or otherwise.

The legislative process is something upon which the Minister can comment in terms of timelines. I appreciate that the legalities of the tender are something about which she cannot comment. The Bill that the Minister mentioned, which is on First Stage, is due back in the House this month, if I am not mistaken. That is clearly an important part of this and I would ask the Minister to confirm that there is only one Bill involved or whether there will be several legislative elements to this suite of measures that she is attempting to implement.

I am assuming that the tender process is going to have the usual cool-down period, on the assumption that a tenderer emerges, of course, because this is probably incredibly complex. Has the Department looked at other jurisdictions and how they tackle this issue? Has it looked at how have others operated in terms of pinning together various Departments that would have the knowledge that the Department of Children and Youth Affairs would need to access to determine, from a means test perspective, who is eligible for what, how the scheme is going to be implemented and what effect it will have on child care service providers in certain communities who might have an overconcentration of parents with huge eligibility or very limited eligibility? Crucially, has the Department given any consideration to examining commercial rates? I appreciate that rates are not directly within the Minister's remit but commercial rates are one of the biggest bugbears of service providers to whom I have spoken. The knock-on effect of commercial rates is an increase in costs to the user. There is incredible disparity from one county to the next. Some local authorities are very good with regard to setting rates while others are punitive. As a former entrepreneur and sole trader, I see commercial rates as a cost of doing business but I also recognise that the margins are pretty tight in the child care field. Is the issue of commercial rates one that the Minister will consider?

Aside from just throwing cash at service providers, on a per child basis, is there something that the Minister could look at structurally that makes child care businesses more viable? Will there be some sort of national approach to this so that local authorities still get some, but not enormous, benefit? At the end of the day, I appreciate that businesses are being run, profits are being made, staff are being paid and so on. However, child care is such an integral part of our communities that perhaps it is time for the Government to look at this in a way that recognises that child care is not just a commercial activity but is also about the child, about education and about affording parents the time to do other things. In that context, it is important to look at it in a slightly different way from other businesses.