Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after "Dáil Éireann" and substitute the following:

"notes:

the success of the Equal Opportunity Childcare Programme (EOCP) in establishing a childcare infrastructure in Ireland from a very low base, creating over 35,000 childcare places, which support not just parents in accessing employment, education and/or training, but also provide many young children with the benefit of early years education;

the role within that programme of the staffing scheme, which over 8 years provided a total of €174 million in supports for the running costs of community based not-for-profit services in disadvantaged areas;

that the staffing scheme was originally awarded to such groups for a limited period, in order to allow them become self-sustaining where this was possible;

that following this period, a number of such groups in very disadvantaged areas were awarded staffing continuation funding to the end of the EOCP, to allow them continue to reduce the fees charged to disadvantaged parents. A condition of this funding was the development of tiered fees, to ensure that the benefit of the grant aid went to the disadvantaged parents it was intended for. This also ensured that community services did not unfairly compete with private services for middle and higher income parents;

that a value for money review was conducted of the EOCP in 2006-07, which consulted with all stakeholders, including community childcare providers, private childcare providers, parents, and Government Departments. While largely positive regarding the scheme, it called for the current method of funding to be replaced with a less ad hoc and more transparent system, which would more effectively target funding to disadvantaged groups. The community childcare subvention scheme (CCSS) has been developed to provide this framework;

that the staffing scheme will cost over €37 million in 2007, whereas €153 million has been secured for the CCSS over the 3 year period 2008-10 starting with €47 million in 2008; and

in addition to this targeted support for disadvantaged parents, universal support is available to all parents towards the cost of childcare through child benefit and the early childcare supplement, and the latter alone costs over €400 million in a full year;

welcomes:

that on the announcement of the new scheme in July 2007, it was also announced that the current level of funding to services would continue to July 2008, to allow the collection of data which would allow costing of improvements to the subventions under the scheme, and that a series of regional seminars were held where this was outlined to community childcare providers;

that the large majority of groups have already returned this data, and the Office of the Minister for Children has started to collate and analyse it in order to advise the Government in regard to any changes or improvements which may be introduced, as promised last July;

the initial analysis of this data suggests that, under the new scheme, even with no subvention, the price charged to non-disadvantaged parents will be significantly below the market price of childcare, largely as a result of capital grant aid and the not-for-profit nature of the services in question;

a number of services, which already had a strong focus on disadvantage and had implemented the tiered fee structure, have contacted the Office of the Minister for Children to say that, having got the information required from parents, they will now have an increased level of grant aid from July 2008, regardless of any future improvements; and

the recent reiteration of the Office of the Minister for Children that this analysis will be completed early in 2008, and that enhancements based on the data will be presented to Government well in advance of next July;

endorses:

the Government's approach to supplementing universal supports to all parents such as child benefit and early childcare supplement, with additional supports to parents who would not otherwise be able to afford childcare and early years education for their children; and

the steps taken to ensure that this targeted funding benefits the most disadvantaged of children, who would not otherwise have access to such services."

I wish to share time with Deputies Calleary, Moynihan, Finian McGrath and Finneran.

See this speech in context