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

There is a debate between what is in the Indecon report and the particular recommendations it makes and, for example, Start Strong. That emerged at the launch, at which many people favoured continuing with the universal approach and introducing a second year as a universal measure. It is worth noting the success of that first year, as the Growing Up in Ireland study, published last week, showed for the first time that young children who had been in the free preschool year had made an extremely good transition into primary school. We have very good evidence on the universal approach, but it might be possible to consider some initiatives such as those that have been recommended by Indecon. A second free preschool year would require considerable additional funding, but as the economic situation improves our children are our greatest resource. Early intervention must be a byword. We ought to look towards building up as many supports as we can, not least because it is an economic imperative that parents should be able to combine work and family life and should have the kind of child care services they need. I will continue to work towards that. The building block is training. As Deputy Ó Caoláin will acknowledge, that has been put into the budget this year and it will mean that by this time next year we will be in a considerably different place in terms of the number of people who are trained to FETAC levels 5 and 6. With the mentoring programme we should be able to move towards more of a career structure for those who are in child care, because that has been missing.

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