Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)

The longer a child is poor, the greater the subsequent deprivation in later life and the greater likelihood of leaving school early, becoming unemployed or getting a low paid job. Some 66,000 children are currently living below the poverty line. Everyone agrees that education is the key that breaks the cycle that traps people in poverty and early intervention is also critical. Therefore, child care is an essential ingredient in breaking the cycle of social exclusion, poverty and disadvantage.

Government policy is to encourage more and more people to enhance their education, up-skill and hopefully move on to greater employment prospects. If one has a young family, the only way to access training, education or employment is by getting someone to care for one's children. This is the dilemma faced by tens of thousands of parents every day. Availability, location, suitability and cost are the other key elements. With regard to cost, Government adjustments were responsible for the short-sighted decision to remove hundreds of individuals or 20% of parents from vocational opportunities training scheme child care funding, despite this being a scheme specifically designed to help parents back into education and paid employment.

Just 4% of three year olds have received publicly funded pre-school education in Ireland compared to 90% in other European countries. Because of the extremely low base, we are playing catch-up in regard to facilities and new legislation requires suitably trained personnel. Community child care centres based in areas of high disadvantage also face other problems, even where suitable facilities exist, including the constant battle to generate funding to keep the centres open.

I am not aware of any community child care facility that is not experiencing problems relating to financial sustainability. The equal opportunities child care programme is currently undergoing a mid-term review and there is a complete lack of clarity as to the supports available to projects following their initial three year allocation. Similarly, the FÁS active labour market programme is under constant review and has experienced constant cutbacks.

The lack of clarity in long-term supports undermines the ability of projects to strategically plan for the future. One Tallaght child care centre has gone through seven managers in seven years, which reflects the instability in the sector. There are currently four mechanisms available to subsidise the cost of child care for families in disadvantaged communities: the EOCP, the FÁS active labour market programme, user purchase and private purchase. The EOCP has a cap on staffing grants of €65,000 per annum over three years, which is insufficient and is at the heart of the problems being experienced by child care providers.

Another factor is that without part-time community employment and those on job initiatives from FÁS, the child care centres as presently structured could not and would not exist. The child care centres' over-reliance on trainee and part-time workers because of the cap on staffing is unfair to the workers, interferes with their training and is another example of the stop-gap, short-term policy that permeates the whole sector.

The funding element is holding back the development of quality child care and needs to be addressed on a long-term basis. Private purchase is not an option in many disadvantaged areas because, increasingly, traditional groups establish their own child care facilities. User purchase is also a problem because the user in many disadvantaged areas cannot afford the service, and, with rising costs, the problem is getting worse.

I will provide one example for the Minister. One facility in Jobstown expects to receive €1.7 million in capital funding and staffing grants but, even with this, it will have to charge €130 to €140 per week. Those for whom this scheme is designed will not be able to afford the service. I know of another child care scheme in the Tallaght west area that charges €30 per week for shorter hours but is having extreme difficulties in finding clients to use the service. We are moving towards having facilities suitable for child care while pricing out the very people the schemes are designed to help. We need to assist parents with the cost of child care by increasing child benefit to €150 per month for the first and second child and to €150.50 for the third and subsequent children.

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