Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Troy. Since becoming Minister, I have sought, notwithstanding the severe financial constraints faced by the Government, to maintain and increase my Department's investment in early years and child care support programmes. In the budget for 2012, I secured an additional funding requirement of nearly €9.8 million to meet increased demographic pressures and to protect the universality of the preschool year, which is a key programme for Government commitment.

In budget 2013, my colleague, the Minister for Social Protection, and I announced a new €14 million after-school care programme. This will provide important support to parents in low income families wishing to take up employment and ensure that some 6,000 quality after-school care places are provided to support children's development. In addition, I announced a new area-based approach to early intervention and addressing child poverty, including a focus on child care provision.

As the Deputy knows, there are two further child care support programmes, those being, the community child care subvention, CCS, and the child care education and training support, CETS, for those attending education and training. There is also the universal early childhood care and education, ECCE, programme. The CCS programme gives money to many community-based child care services to enable them to provide child care at reduced rates to parents who are in receipt of social welfare payments or are on low incomes. The CETS programme provides €145 towards the weekly cost of full-time child care places to participating child care services in the community and commercial sectors for qualifying trainees and students. Students on part-time courses are funded on a pro rata basis.

In 2013, my Department's total expenditure on child care will be approximately €260 million. This represents a significant investment in supporting parents with the cost of child care.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House

With respect to future developments, I have indicated my objective numerous times to seek to introduce a second free preschool year, which would represent an equivalent saving of approximately €3,000 in child care costs for parents, as well as contribute to improved educational and developmental outcomes for children. However, any development that involves further preschool provision would require considerable additional funding.

The reality is that this country has a poor record in developing an architecture for quality, affordable child care provision. Of the total so-called child care spend since 2000, more than 60% has been on bricks and mortar or direct cash payments to parents, with less than 40% spent on developing an effective system of quality, affordable child care provision. In the coming years, I hope that we will be in a position to address this legacy through increased investment as the economic and budgetary situation improves.

As a building block towards a possible second free preschool year, my Department is continuing to work on and invest in improving quality standards and workforce capacity. Future developments relating to early years care and education will be considered during preparation of the new national early years strategy, which is being developed by my Department and will be published later this year.

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