John Moloney (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

The scheme will, for the first time, introduce requirements for staff to hold qualifications in child care. This is an enormous step forward and I expect to see further advances being made in the next few years, supported by the workforce development plan for the sector. There will be flexibility in the initial period of the scheme to enable services to meet the requirements in a short timeframe. If the motion were more clearly concerned with children rather than profit margins, I would have expected such issues to appear prominently.

The counter-motion being presented by the Government contains a more accurate summation of the scheme. The introduction of ECCE has answered calls made over the years by many bodies, such as the OECD and the NESF. The Labour Party called for such a scheme to be introduced a few years ago, which would similarly have involved the payment of a capitation rate to community and commercial preschool services. This was costed by the Labour Party at €180 million in 2007, although I understand that would have had to accommodate 48 weeks' provision, making the weekly rate of capitation some 15% to 20% lower.

I was particularly interested to note a comment made by Fintan O'Toole in the run-up to last October's budget. On 14 October he wrote:

[T]here's a very simple test of Brian Lenihan's first budget. If it contains a commitment to scrap the early childcare supplement and to create a universal preschool system, we have intelligent government.

It is worth reading a second time.

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