Ms Teresa Heeney:

I thank the Cathaoirleach. I wish committee members a good afternoon and I thank them all for inviting Early Childhood Ireland here today to discuss the issues facing the early childhood sector. I am the CEO of Early Childhood Ireland and with me is my colleague, Frances Byrne, our director of policy.

Early Childhood Ireland is the leading children’s advocacy and membership organisation, working in partnership with over 4,000 members nationwide to achieve quality experiences for every child in early years and school age care settings. We have a wide and diverse membership consisting of privately and publicly owned settings, educators, childminders, academics and students. All of our work is informed by what is best for children.

There is no doubt that the members of this committee are aware of the huge importance of early years and school age care for infants and young children. Early childhood lasts a lifetime and there is a large body of evidence to prove that quality early childhood education has a positive and long-lasting impact on children’s outcomes, particularly for those experiencing disadvantage. Today, we are asking policymakers to adequately respond to the issues facing our hugely significant sector.

I would like to begin by discussing the issue of staffing. The recruitment and retention of staff is the number one challenge facing early years and school age care settings at present. By law, settings must ensure that a specific number of competent, Garda-vetted and qualified adults are working directly with children at all times. If a setting cannot fulfil the adult to child ratios, it may be forced to close one or more rooms, and delay any capacity expansion plans. Staffing pressures are caused by factors such as pay and working conditions, which we have already heard about.

First, many early years and school age care educators feel that their pay does not reflect the value of their work or the level of training and education they have obtained. Second, while Government policy rightly strives for a graduate-led workforce with quality-assured continuous professional development, pay rates are not matching this important policy goal. The latest available data from the Pobal early years sector profile show that approximately 25% of staff working directly with children have a national framework of qualifications level 5 qualification, 40% have a level 6, while 33% have a level 7 qualification or higher. It is vital that core funding addresses the terms and conditions of staff and that the sector’s 30,000-strong workforce is not left at the mercy of an annual wage negotiation process which is moving at a frustratingly slow pace.

I will move on now to discuss investment and better data. While Early Childhood Ireland commends the Government on providing over €1 billion for the early years and school age care sector, this investment was coming from a very low base. To bring us in line with our EU counterparts, Early Childhood Ireland proposes that the Government publishes a five-year plan for implementing additional investment in our children’s early years and school age care to reach €4 billion, which is approximately 1% of GDP, by early 2029.

Good planning requires good data. We are also calling for the implementation of the Partnership for the Public Good report's better data recommendations and to initiate a system of national and local two-year and five-year planning cycles to ensure there are enough early years and school age care places in their own communities for children.

On the issue of the administrative burden, our members are concerned about the amount of time they spend on administering the various funding programmes as it is taking educators away from quality contact time with children. Many are particularly dismayed by the attendance requirements. These lead to a lack of flexibility for families and are not child-centred as they should be, and focused on the lives and needs of children. Early Childhood Ireland proposes a unification of the existing funding programmes: the national childcare scheme, the early childhood care and education scheme and the core funding, to allow settings to use capacity and not children’s attendance as a funding requirement, as is the case with one of the programmes now. This would offer improved flexibility with no financial consequences for providers or parents. We can say more about this if the committee would find that useful.

We would also like to discuss with the committee today the issue of setting closures. For various reasons, according to the reports to Tusla, early years or school age care settings must close. Early Childhood Ireland believes that not enough is being done by the relevant stakeholders at present to avoid or to manage these closures properly. We are proposing the establishment of a stakeholder response team whose purpose is to manage and respond to planned setting closures in a timely manner, and to examine a range of options focused on the best interests of children.

We have provided the committee with a more extensive policy proposal document that goes into greater detail. We will distribute that.

Significantly more investment is needed to provide an early years and school-age care sector that is of high quality, adequate capacity and inclusive of all children. It is vital for the interim sustainability and certainty that families, providers, educators and communities need that a new funding target and a coherent plan to achieve it is published. We have repeatedly called on the current Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, and his Cabinet colleagues to do this. We hope that this committee will consider supporting us in this call. It will require more than one Government to agree and implement this plan, so political leadership from all sides is needed. All children and families deserve nothing less.

We thank the committee for inviting us here today and look forward to the discussion and questions.