Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I would like to outline the key aspects of the budget that impact on the Vote for my office as the Minister with responsibility for children and youth affairs. A key area of Government policy implemented by my office is the National Childcare Investment Programme 2006-2010, NCIP, which has a total allocation of €575 million over the period 2006-10, of which €358 million is in respect of capital and €217 million is for current funding.

This programme was launched in December 2005 as a successor programme to the equal opportunities child care programme which was introduced in 2000 and continued to operate until the end of 2007. The introduction of the NCIP at that time and its inclusion in the national development plan demonstrated a clear and ongoing commitment by the Government to meeting the needs of parents and their children for quality child care services.

The commitment to the NCIP and to funding commitments until 2010 will continue to be met. However, in the context of a reduction in public expenditure during 2009 and 2010, it is considered appropriate to target the programme's resources in a way which ensures the continued delivery of quality child care services as well as ensuring sufficient resources to meet existing capital commitments. As a result, the current funding allocation of the national childcare investment programme is being sustained in 2009 at its full 2008 level of €73.578 million. This will enable my office to continue to support child care across the State, as well as providing sufficient funding for the community child care subvention scheme. This scheme enables disadvantaged parents using community-based child care services to avail of reduced child care fees. There is already a significant commitment of over €50 million per annum to the community child care subvention scheme from 2008 to 2010.

The current funding allocation will be accompanied in 2009 by a capital allocation of €60 million. This capital allocation will meet the expected capital funding requirement expected to arise in 2009. Capital expenditure under the national childcare investment programme in 2008 is expected to amount to less than €80 million.

Capital expenditure to develop a quality child care infrastructure will continue under the national childcare investment programme and grant applications will continue to be processed by my office. The intention is to extend the capital programme beyond its original timeframe of 2010. This approach was adopted under the Equal Opportunities Childcare Programme 2001-2006, which was extended by an additional year to 2007. This allowed the programme to provide additional flexibility to child care projects, in particular those in the community-based not-for-profit sector who qualify for large-scale grants of up to €1.2 million.

These applicants generally require a significant period to bring their proposals for grant funding through to the point at which they are in a position to draw down funding. Extending the timeframe for expenditure is also likely to bring each year's allocation of funding more closely in line with the actual demand for grant draw-down each year, thereby ensuring all the capital allocation for that year is fully utilised.

The national childcare investment programme is well on the way to achieving its targets of creating 50,000 additional child care places. A total of some €200 million has been approved to date in capital grant funding and will result in approximately 30,000 additional child care places being created and a further 44,000 existing places being supported. Over the next four years, I hope to see the programme's capital allocation being fully utilised with many more capital projects approved and completed.

In addition, more than €16.6 million is provided under national childcare investment programme current funding to support the network of 33 city and county child care committees and eight major child care organisations, such as the National Children's Nurseries Association which I met today. The extension of the national childcare investment programme will continue this support during 2011 and 2012. The child care committees are an important support structure for the implementation of the national childcare investment programme at local level and work closely with the child care organisations supported under the programme. As is the case across the board, in 2009 the support funding provided to the child care committees and the organisations, will be subject to a reduction of 3%.

As the national childcare investment programme is expected to continue in place until the end of 2012, the review process proposed for 2010 to consider any successor programme is expected to be undertaken in 2012. In this regard, the development of future policy for early years care and education will benefit from the additional expertise which will be available to my office following the closure of the Centre for Early Childhood Development and Education.

The location of this expertise within the early years policy unit of the Department of Education and Science, co-located in my office, will provide a clearer focus for early years care and development at central level. I have already asked officials in my office to draw up proposals which will ensure a more effective use of our existing framework and resources, taking account of the deployment of this expertise.

A further important area of direct support which my office oversees for parents with young children is the early childhood supplement. The supplement was introduced in 2006 as an additional and direct quarterly payment, in arrears, of €250 per quarter, or €1,000 per annum, to parents of children aged under six years. This payment was increased in January of this year by 10%, bringing it to a payment of €275 per quarter, or €1,100 per annum. This payment will continue to be made to assist parents with the high costs associated with caring for young children in their preschool years.

Arising from the budgetary changes which have been introduced, with effect from January 2009, the supplement will move to monthly payments. This change should make it easier for parents to manage their ongoing costs in providing for the care of their children, many of which are incurred on a monthly basis.

As a result of this change, parents will receive a supplement payment for January 2009 in February and so forth rather than having to wait for the three payments to be made as one single payment in April. As the monthly payment will be rounded up to €92, the annual payment will increase to €1,104. It is proposed to have the payments made to parents on the second Monday of each month.

As the supplement was implemented as a quarterly payment, it was decided that the quarterly payment in respect of the final quarter of each year, October to December, would be paid in December rather than January. As the payment from January 2009 will be made on a monthly basis, the question of making an advance payment for the final quarter will not arise. As a result, a once-off saving to the Exchequer amounting to €40 million is expected to arise in 2009.

In addition, as a quarterly payment, despite being a payment made in arrears, the decision was taken to assist parents during the first quarter of their child's life. As a result, parents received the payment in respect of both that first quarter and the quarter in which their child ceased to qualify. As a monthly payment, and like child benefit, this issue will not arise. This is expected to result in an annual saving to the Exchequer of €18 million.

Savings arising from moving the early childhood supplement to a monthly payment have made it necessary to introduce a further budgetary change to the scheme. This is expected to yield a further saving of €35 million in a full year. This saving will be made from the reduction of the period for which children qualify for the payment, from zero to six years to zero to five years and six months. This change has been introduced having regard to the fact that the early childhood supplement was introduced as an additional, targeted measure supporting parents caring for young children in their preschool years.

In general, children start primary school at the age of four or five years and their parents will continue to receive early childhood supplement payments for them during this period. Given that the compulsory age to commence primary school is six years, all children aged more than five and a half years in September of each year, are school-going. This measure is not, therefore, expected to impact significantly on parents of preschool children.

An increased resource allocation of just over €3 million is being made available from the dormant accounts fund to support a range of targeted measures for children and young people. The additional funds, bringing the total allocation to €6.15 million in 2009, will assist in supporting the continuation of the prevention and early intervention programme and the implementation of the national play and recreation policies.

The prevention and early intervention programme, initially announced in 2006, is primarily aimed at promoting better outcomes for children through innovation and improved planning, integration and delivery of services. The programme uses international evidence of what works to support activities chosen. This requires a range of statutory and non-statutory agencies, working across sectors, to collaborate in both service design and interagency delivery.

The programme is being managed by my office and the administration of funds overseen by it. It will run for five years with a fund amounting to €36 million in total, of which €18 million is being provided by the Government and the balance by The Atlantic Philanthropies. The Government agreed the best use of this funding would be to focus initially on a small number of projects in severely disadvantaged areas. Accordingly, the funds have been committed to projects in Ballymun, west Tallaght and Darndale-Belcamp based on plans drawn up over a two-year period by local statutory and community bodies. Some €4.9 million has been allocated to this programme in 2009.

Initially, we will focus on a small number of projects. In general, service implementation for the three projects will typically require action among a range of local service providers in collaboration with their local communities. This will entail a range of statutory and non-statutory agencies, working across sectors, collaborating in both service design and interagency delivery. A key element of the programme will be the ongoing monitoring and evaluation of both the outcomes of the activities undertaken and learning from the individual projects. This will provide an important input to policy and service development. If these projects prove successful, the results will provide the basis for policy changes which will improve the outcomes for every child.

There has been growing recognition in recent years of the importance of play for children's development. Ready, steady, play, the national play policy launched in 2004, aims to improve the lives of children through creating more and better public play facilities for them. To date over €28 million has been expended on improving play infrastructure. This has resulted in an increase from less than 200 to over 500 playgrounds with a further 116 planned over the next two years.

I am pleased to say that the additional resources being made available in 2009 through the dormant accounts fund will provide €300,000 towards the playbus scheme, initiated this year in the national play policy. The scheme is intended to provide interventions that support the family unit, particularly those parents and children experiencing social exclusion, through play development and parenting development outreach services in disadvantaged and isolated areas. The funding measure aims to provide a play area for children to support spontaneity and creativity, and a resource area on the bus for parents and guardians in order to support skills development. A resource allocation was made available to cover costs associated with the adaptation and/or purchase of a bus to meet agreed standards suitable for play for children and for the provision of parenting supports.

In building on the success of the national play policy, which was instrumental in improving the national play infrastructure for children in Ireland, Teenspace — A National Recreation Policy for Young People was launched in September 2007. The policy provides a strategic framework for the promotion of positive recreational opportunities aimed principally at young people aged 12 to 18.

The launch of the policy highlighted the Government's commitment to the development of youth cafés. In this regard, a sum of €750,000 is being made available in 2009 to support the development of a structured youth café programme for young people. There are already a number of youth cafés in operation around the country. Funding for these existing initiatives is provided through a number of bodies, including local city and county councils and the Health Service Executive. The Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs also operates a number of relevant funding programmes aimed at supporting community development, locally based community and voluntary groups, as well as programmes aimed specifically at supporting projects for disadvantaged youth.

At this stage, the focus is to bring better coherence to the approach taken to date, retaining the strong inter-agency element and identifying an appropriate model or models for youth cafés for future development. In recent months my office has undertaken a small survey of some of the existing cafés looking at mission statements, objectives, management and organisation, service levels and the role played by young people.

The National Children's Advisory Council recently completed research on the development of a youth café model and the report is currently under consideration. This work will guide the Government in ensuring that funding is targeted and co-ordinated most effectively on a model or models of youth cafés which meet the needs identified by young people themselves. Discussions are under way with relevant Government Departments regarding a youth café programme and appropriate funding mechanisms. Consideration is being given as to which agency could best lead on the programme and how to ensure any funding which might be made available will augment, without displacing, the existing inter-agency resources.

A sum of €8.114 million is being made available in 2009 to support costs associated with the national longitudinal study of children in Ireland, and a range of other programmed activities by my office to support the implementation of the three goals of the national children's strategy. My office is fully committed to implementing goal one of the strategy, which states, "Children will have a voice in matters which affect them and their views will be given due weight in accordance with their age and maturity."

Goal two of the national children's strategy provides that "Children's lives will be better understood; their lives will benefit from evaluation, research and information on their needs, rights and the effectiveness of services." This goal is to achieve a better understanding of how children grow up in Ireland, including both their individual and shared needs.

"Growing Up in Ireland" is the Government's landmark national longitudinal study of children in Ireland and is the most important of its kind ever to take place in this country. The study will follow the development of two different age groups of children: 10,000 nine-month-old infants and 8,500 nine-year-old children, thus yielding important information about each significant transition throughout their young lives. "Growing Up in Ireland" reached its first major milestone in September 2008 by completing the first wave of data collection. The funding provision to support the study in 2009 is €4.852 million. A sum of €3 million has been allocated to support costs which may arise in connection with the holding of a constitutional referendum on children's rights in 2009.

The joint committee submitted an interim report to the Oireachtas on 11 September 2008, which recommended that the Government establish a statutory scheme for Garda vetting, for the regulation of the collation, exchange and deployment of hard and soft information for the purpose of child protection. I am glad to see that the committee is making such rapid progress on achieving consensus on these complex issues.

As regards the rationalisation of agencies and further to the OECD report on public sector reform, the Children Acts Advisory Board, CAAB, is to be subsumed into my office. I take this opportunity to thank the staff of CAAB for all the work they have done since the board's establishment, in particular, Ms Jacinta Stewart and Mr. Aidan Browne.

I commend the budgetary measures to the House.

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