Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Staff in the child care sector have a critical role to play in delivering high quality child care services and deserve to be valued and respected for the important role they play with children. Because child care costs for parents in Ireland are among the highest in the OECD, we need to address the issues of affordability and quality at the same time. The Department is not an employer of child care workers, but it is a significant funder of child care services. I am very conscious that there is an issue with the pay and conditions of workers in the sector and the Department is engaging with the early years sector to explore how it can be addressed in the short, medium and long term.

The programme for Government commits to carrying out an independent review of the cost of providing quality child care, which probably has more to do with what will happen in the medium term. This commitment aligns closely with work on the design and development of a new single affordable child care scheme and we are progressing this work in that context. The review will feed into future policy development, including on levels of payments to services.

I am pleased that the previous two budgets delivered a 35% increase each year in funding for child care services. We need to continue to invest and I will argue for more resources in 2018. To go some way towards addressing cost pressures faced by providers in the sector, I have secured €10 million to enable them to be paid for non-contact time, when they will have no children present and will be able to pay staff to concentrate on the administrative workload. The services can decide how to use the payment when it is received. That is to happen in the short term.

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