Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for attending. The topic of child care costs and, more specifically, the provision of the second preschool year has garnered a lot of coverage in recent weeks. The Minister, Deputy Quinn, suggested a second preschool year could be provided through a reduction in the funding of child benefit, a view which seems to be supported by the Ministers, Deputies Fitzgerald and Burton, but not supported by the Tánaiste, who seemed to shut down the whole debate.

The provision of affordable child care is an extremely important issue which warrants further consideration, although a second preschool year alone will not deal with the high costs of child care. I believe debating the second preschool year is premature until weaknesses within the existing preschool year are addressed. I was disappointed that a recent evaluation report compiled by an inspector from the Department of Education and Skills and a member of the HSE, in regard to a small sample of State-supported early child care settings, was leaked to the media instead of being properly published and debated in the House. The evaluation process concentrated on five key areas, which I will not outline here as the Minister knows them well. I acknowledge there were positive results in some areas, including in regard to quality of personal care and the extent to which relationships with children and the environment supported children's development. However, there were areas of concern, in particular that the extent to which the programme of activities and its implementation supports children's development was effective in less than half of the settings evaluated, demonstrating significant weaknesses or more weaknesses than strengths. Inspectors expressed concern that there was a lack of planning in some settings for a curriculum which is based on children's abilities, interests and needs.

That is worrying considering the early years are the most formative in a child's development. Much of the policy development for early childhood care and education has been completed, namely, Síolta, the national quality framework for early childhood education, Aistear, the early childhood curriculum framework and a workforce development plan. However, there is a complete failure to progress any of these initiatives to an extent that will actually result in change. Some 134 out of approximately 4,000 services are currently implementing the Síolta quality assurance programme, and with regard to Aistear, which was commissioned by the Department of Education and Skills, to date, neither the NCCA nor the Department of Education and Skills or the early years policy unit has taken responsibility for the implementation of the framework. The workforce development plan was expected to focus on developing the workforce through commitments and resources to upskill staff but, instead, focused on standardising qualification and training levels. National and international research established that the skills and qualifications of adults working with young children are a critical factor in determining the quality of children's early childhood care and education experience.

None of these failures is attributable to the early childhood services, rather, it is the Government's failure to provide the necessary resources and supports and to ensure the policies it champions are implemented. That said, I acknowledge the evaluation process sample was extremely small. Will this evaluation process be expanded given we now know there are areas of significant weakness? Will the Minister ensure the model of evaluation and inspection is based on best outcomes for the children rather than being compliance based? We would like to see a second preschool year introduced but it is critical that we look at the weaknesses that exist in the current preschool year before we seek to introduce a second.

See this speech in context