Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

The early child care supplement was a useful, if inadequate, payment to families who had children under five. It was to provide financial assistance and support for child care, which was a welcome help in the cost of raising children. It has been halved from 1 May and will be abolished by 1 January 2010.

What is being presented as a replacement is a different matter entirely and it should not be dealt with as a replacement. We are not comparing like with like in that respect. A scheme of 18 months of preschool education on a universal basis is an enormous and very important initiative and I compliment the Government on its introduction. It is one of the few welcome initiatives by this Government.

It should not be introduced as a replacement for the child care supplement scheme, which was a tranche of money provided to parents to support the raising of children. This scheme must be a structured preschool 15-month period that would be available for young children from the age of three years and three months until four years and six months, which is missing in the current system. We will not delve into the past but there are reasons there has never been a preschool year.

The Labour Party has always sought this initiative and when I was spokesperson on education, I articulated such a scheme on a universal basis as one of the ideas that would be a major priority for us. Nobody expected it to be provided in the fashion proposed, with a budgetary announcement that will be introduced in one form or another between now and 1 January 2010. Depending on the children's age, 1 December will be the starting point. There is a short space of time to prepare if we are to have a properly structured set-up.

We must ensure we have sufficient and suitably qualified people to provide the service. Any requirements should be met, although there is not much time to do this. We must ensure spaces are there in existing services and premises. We should have considered this matter in the context of how we provided free education in the past with free primary, secondary and third level education.

For example, there would be much space in certain areas of primary education and this could have been considered for the provision of a structured space in that area. We are not sure if there is any space in primary schools, if an audit of such space has been done or whether prefabs will be used come 1 January. That date comes in the middle of the school year for all other pupils. Will the allocated funding be adequate? The specified funding of €64.50 per week is proposed with no provision for a top-up, and it will be a compulsory five-day week without any flexibility within the system.

The announcement should have been made but there should have been a lead-in period where there could have been consultation with all the providers of preschool services. The parents and their organisations could have been brought on board and the matter could have been discussed by the various bodies who would consider a suitable curriculum for the preschool year, as we do not have such a curriculum now. This would be instead of having an ad hoc announcement in the budget that will fall into place to a greater or lesser degree in different parts of the country depending on existing levels of service. That was a questionable way to introduce a major initiative in education.

If it goes well, a universal preschool service would be enormously beneficial in constituencies like mine, where there is considerable disadvantage and where young children find it difficult to have a decent level of education right across the board at any stage. In some cases it is particularly difficult for youngsters to get a good preschool education because neither the facilities nor the funding is available. If we have a quality universal preschool education service, it will do much good work in preventing much of the limited educational attainment in disadvantaged areas which often result in difficulties in later life. I urge the Minister to provide a more structured approach to the provision of preschool schemes.

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