James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his question. A key priority for the Government is to ensure that quality early years services are available to preschool children. My Department is progressing the early years quality agenda, which represents a programme of measures to support, monitor and regulate the improvement of quality standards in preschool services. A key element of the agenda is strengthening the national early years regulatory regime. This will result in a change in practice in a number of areas relating to early years inspections.

Responsibility for the inspection of early years services transferred from the HSE to the Child and Family Agency in January 2014. Legislative amendments under the Child and Family Agency Act 2013 strengthened the inspection regime and provided a statutory basis for the registration of early years services. The new registration system, which will be introduced by the Child and Family Agency, requires that anyone seeking to open an early years service must register with the agency prior to the facility being opened.

The proposed service will then be inspected to ensure it meets all the necessary criteria before registration is granted. A similar inspection will be carried out at three yearly intervals. Ongoing inspections will be carried out after the service has become operational and children are attending. The legislation also provides for increased sanctions for service providers that do not comply with the regulations. The agency will also be in a position to refuse to register a service provider, remove a provider from the register, or attach conditions to the registration of a provider.

The Child and Family Agency is working to make the inspection system more consistent and robust. Reports on all inspections conducted since the middle of 2013 are published online and the agency is in the process of publishing retrospective inspection reports. The early years inspectorate is now managed by the agency on a national basis and working to common standards. The inspection tools and report format have been reviewed and new inspection arrangements will accompany the new regulations later this year. The regulations will incorporate new national quality standards which will provide the basis against which services will be inspected and reported on. Services will be supported to work towards higher standards of quality based on clearer criteria for measuring levels of compliance.

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