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

There are a number of things which I am doing now because of the urgency of the situation and in order to support the movement towards the sustainability we have all spoken about. A piece of independent research is being commissioned - I hope it will be put out by mid-August - and it is critical. While we wait for that, given the urgency of the challenges faced by the services, I have asked the officials in my Department to address two of the most acute issues relating to sustainability that the sector has identified to me. That relates to the impact of the removal of unqualified community employment scheme participants from the core child staff ratios and funding for the administrative work done by services or non-contact time. Officials are in the process of administering payments totalling €1 million to a number of services which had relied on CE participants as core staff. A large proportion of funding has already been paid out. In addition, my Department is currently administering non-contact time payments to providers totalling €14.5 million. The average payment per service is €2,600. I was also pleased to allocate an additional €3.5 million in non-contact payment recently for services which sign up for the September 2017 more affordable child care measures. That is €18 million in 2017 for non-contact time. I look forward to responding to some of the issues the Deputies raised, especially Deputy Funchion, in more detail tomorrow.

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