Paul Connaughton (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on the motion. Currently, the Government is spending in the region of €260 million annually to support child care programmes, and that money is providing very valuable assistance to parents throughout the country in accessing affordable child care. In particular, the early childhood care and education, ECCE, programme and the community child care subvention programmes are particularly valuable to parents of young children, providing care in both private and community settings. Services offering the ECCE programmes receive capitation fees of up to €75 per week per qualifying child, depending on staff qualifications.

The issue of qualifications for people working with preschool children is a crucial question. Caring for small children is a very difficult job and it is only right and proper that such an important role should be restricted to those who have the interest and have taken the time to educate themselves in the area. I note that work on a preschool quality agenda is progressing and part of this involves increasing the qualification requirement for all staff caring for children in a preschool setting to a minimum of FETAC level 5 by September 2015. I believe this is very welcome but I want to stress that an enhanced regulatory and oversight regime is necessary to ensure the additional learning is reflected in work practices. A robust inspection regime will help allay the fears of parents that children are being maltreated in the manner seen on the "Prime Time" programme.

One worrying aspect about the inspection regime is the suggestion that increased costs will be reflected in increased annual fees for child care services. Rising costs for the child care sector would result in the reduction in the number of child care services and could also result in increased cost for parents, which would be counter-productive for the sector in the long run. Already, 77% of preschool children are cared for by parents or relatives. If significant inspection costs are passed on to child care providers, this figure could rise.

One difficulty I regularly encounter in terms of parents with children attending community child care facilities is that a delay in processing medical cards is placing great stress on families intending to have children cared for in a community child care setting. The review of discretionary medical cards that took place last July created great difficulty for parents considering placing children in child care in September. The subvention of €95 per week was the defining criteria as to whether child care was affordable.

I welcome the fact parents who get work during the school year continue to receive this subvention until the end of the school year, and have a further year of reduced support afterwards. Going back to work can be an expensive time for a family, and these are the sort of common sense measures that can be taken to ease that process. I do not believe that direct payments to parents via the family income supplement, FIS, is the way forward because that would simply swamp the FIS system and would require means assessment of the vast majority of the country's parents. However, tax breaks for child care and increased tax credits are incentives that could be put in place with much less effort. These, rather than any new child care subvention, are the measures that would be more beneficial to working parents.

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