Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

The debate on child care we should be having is about how to ensure the best care for our children, including in the home, at school and in crèches. We should debate how the State can support such a caring system and how it can be delivered to all who need it on the basis of need alone. Instead, once again, we are addressing a critical situation, a botched Government scheme that has thrown the community child care system into chaos. This need not have happened. If the Department of Health and Children had consulted the community child care sector when it was framing a new scheme and if it had listened to what it was told by those on the front line of child care delivery, this situation would not have arisen.

The Government's approach has led first to confusion, then serious concern and now alarm among thousands of child care workers and parents. The proposed new community child care subvention scheme is fundamentally flawed. Throughout this State over recent weeks community child care workers and parents have been meeting to organise against the implementation of this scheme in its present form. It requires radical and fundamental reform.

In my constituency child care workers at Farney community crèche in Carrickmacross, County Monaghan, have predicted that if this scheme goes ahead many parents will pull out of the crèche and it will have to double its fees. Like other such child care facilities, it could be forced to close, resulting in loss of jobs. Farney community crèche has provided affordable child care in Carrickmacross for more than a decade. It has allowed many parents, especially women, to take up the opportunity for jobs and training. This is under threat.

The Farney experience is replicated right across the Twenty-six Counties. From Donegal to Wexford and from Dublin to Mayo, the community child care subvention scheme has provoked intense opposition. The Minister of State with responsibility for children, Deputy Brendan Smith, is aware of this. I met him recently in the company of other County Monaghan Oireachtas Members when he was lobbied by representatives of the community child care sector in our shared constituency. Without exception those representatives made clear to the Minister of State their strong objections to the scheme.

In response to the widespread alarm at the scheme the Minister of State has indicated that the subvention will not be confined to parents in receipt of social welfare. This may be the beginning of a U-turn or it may not. It has certainly caused further confusion. The scheme has been clearly signalled to community child care workers as one designed for recipients of social welfare payments. The application forms filled in by parents and collected by the crèches reflect this original design of the scheme.

Last week my Dáil office received a briefing from officials in the Minister of State's office. I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Brendan Smith, for that opportunity. However, the briefing confirmed that the scheme will go ahead as planned and that it is based primarily on subsidisation of child care costs for parents in receipt of social welfare. In addition, the officials informed us that the application forms received will be assessed to ascertain the overall profile of parents using crèches subsidised under the equal opportunities child care programme. We are told that based on the assessment, the Government will decide how widely to extend the subvention beyond those on social welfare. The Minister's office indicates that a decision on a new income threshold will be announced in February.

The Government has felt the need to respond to the upsurge of opposition to this scheme but it is unclear what the outcome will be. It is essential, therefore, to emphasise again the key points of objection to the scheme as it will remain essentially the same scheme and with the same negative consequences. Nobody disagrees with the stated intent of the scheme which is to make child care more accessible for low income parents. Too many families still cannot gain access to child care owing to lack of affordability. This has serious consequences for children and for parents who wish to improve the lives of their families through part-time or full-time employment. Far from meeting these needs in a fair manner, however, the new scheme, if implemented in its present form, could lead to a two-tier child care system. We could have one tier of crèches for people on social welfare and other low income families and another tier for those paying the full cost. The application procedure has already placed an excessive burden on often small community child care services that operate with few staff and feel overwhelmed by the bureaucracy that has landed on their desks.

I emphasise again that there are already clear indications that this new scheme will lead to fees being increased significantly for those not on social welfare and it could also lead to crèches closing if they do not have sufficient numbers on social welfare on their books. This scheme will undoubtedly drive many parents, especially women, back out of work and into social welfare dependence. They will find that as they are not on social welfare they will not qualify for child care subvention and will face higher child care fees. This will eat up their income and they will conclude that it is not worth their while working. They will lose the opportunity to work and the community child care facilities will lose them as clients.

We call on the Minister of State with responsibility for children, Deputy Brendan Smith, to suspend the introduction of the new scheme, extending the EOCP in the meantime, pending full consultation with the community child care sector. I emphasise that full consultation is crucial. We need to get this right and not put in place a flawed system that could cause untold problems in the future and would be very difficult to unravel. The Minister of State may well decide to extend the subvention, for example, to those with the full medical card. The difference between the social welfare and the medical card thresholds would be marginal. However the danger is that this would be presented as a major concession and extension of the scheme and that would not be the case. I hope the Minister of State will note this fact because if that is the area in which he is considering extending the remit of the scheme it will fall significantly short of what he needs to do.

The scheme is fundamentally flawed. We should move towards universal provision of preschool child care. This scheme moves us in the opposite direction towards a two-tier structure that mirrors our grossly inequitable two-tier health service. Sinn Féin has set out its vision of how the State should address this important issue of child care. We believe the Government should have the following goals and should work to achieve them within a definite timeframe.

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