Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

Of course I will make it available to the Deputies. I understood they had it already; I apologise.

Alongside the provision of free third level education, in 1995, my then colleague, the Labour Party Minister Niamh Bhreathnach, started the first universal preschool education system in Ireland, which was called Early Start and which was particularly targeted at communities in which there was disadvantage or poverty. That scheme, which the Deputy has possibly heard about, has been one of the most successful schemes, and I am happy to say it was initiated by the rainbow coalition. It has benefited many thousands of children.

I will not give details of all the initiatives in the Department of Education and Skills, but in the Department of Children and Youth Affairs there is the early childhood care and education programme, ECCE, which is open to all children aged between three years and four months and four years and six months in September of each year. Under the programme, child care providers are paid a weekly capitation fee in respect of each child. Up to now, this fee has been provided at a rate of €64.50 per child per week, or €75 per child per week where the preschool leaders hold degree-level qualifications in early education. Following the changes announced in budget 2012, these rates will change to €62.50 and €73, respectively, from September 2012. As such, this change will not take effect in the current preschool year. Some 61,000 places are being provided under the ECCE programme, consisting of 17,000 community places and 44,000 private places. That is sufficient to provide the children in that age cohort with a free preschool year.

The community child care subvention, or CCS programme, assists some 1,000 community-based non-profit child care facilities nationwide to enable them to charge reduced child care fees to disadvantaged and low-income families who avail of their services. Parents in receipt of social welfare income support, including family income supplement, are subsidised by €100 for five days of full-day care, although most of them use half-rate or seasonal places, which are subsidised at reduced pro rata rates of €50 and €33, respectively. Other parents who have medical cards or GP visit cards receive a lower subsidy of half the full day care rate, which is €50. Data with regard to the eligibility of parents in the 2011-12 annual return has recently been sent to the Department of Children and Youth Affairs and is currently being processed and examined.

The child care education and training system is implemented by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs on behalf of FÁS and the VECs. Under this scheme, parents who are FÁS or VEC trainees and who need assistance with child care costs so that they can access education and training with the aim of entering or returning to employment no longer need to pay for child care. Participating services are paid a weekly capitation fee of €170 for each child care place they provide for trainees, because, as the Deputy pointed out, child care in Ireland is expensive. From September 2012, the capitation fee will be €145 per week, and child care services will be allowed to charge an additional day care fee of up to €25. There are 2,800 places under this scheme. To bring the Deputy up to date, there are 15,864 after-school places supported by the national child care investment programme, out of a total of 75,297 places. A further 37,000 primary school children are cared for by childminders.

The expansion and development of child care, both preschool and after school, is a big job for this country. However, we are not starting from zero. We actually have a significant child care infrastructure, including all of the crèches and so on built during the boom, but we also have the primary school network. As Deputy Ó Snodaigh mentioned, there are primary school buildings that close in the late afternoon, which many of us would like to see being made available for a variety of community purposes. In my own constituency we have the Fingal model partnership, which involves the county council, community centres, child activities, the county child care committee and the primary schools. That model now applies in quite a significant number of schools and in joint campuses of primary and secondary schools, and is working very well. Although there is a lot of work to be done, there is significant child care provision already. We must seek to expand this significantly.

A new study called Understanding Childhood Deprivation in Ireland was published this morning by the Department of Social Protection and the ESRI. The study was conducted by independent experts who have been working on this data and producing a series of studies over a number of years. The key finding is that children have a higher poverty risk than adults, and these children are more likely to be in low-income and jobless households. Poverty is especially detrimental for children due to its long-term effects, which persist into adulthood. An adequate income is the basic requirement. Child and family income support plays a critical role in protecting children. Beyond this, mothers' education, employment, especially of the mother, and family stability are critically important. I suspect this is not anything we do not know already, even in terms of our own family experiences. These are the acknowledged Irish and international experiences. I hope some of the Deputies would look at some of these changes in that context, in terms of the betterment of children. Change is difficult but although we continue to spend more than €1 billion per year on lone parents and their children, with another €2 billion going to supports for families and children in general, the current system is not producing the quality of outcome to which our lone parents or people parenting on their own and their children are entitled. I return to the question that arises from experience in other countries. Why do they emphasise an earlier age? It is to provide for and encourage people to get back into education and training and, ultimately, back to work at an earlier age.

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