Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Funchion for tabling this motion this evening. I know it is something that both she and Deputy Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire have been very passionate about at committee in the months since I was elected. I heard all the Minister had to say and I welcome her response. She is quite right. There has been a gap from Government for a number of years, in particular in the previous five years. I know she is raising it with her colleagues in government. She has brought an emphasis to it and I understand her passion for and understanding of the sector. However, for the rest of us who are not at the Cabinet table and are not part of Government, we do not wish to be personal towards the Minister, Deputy Zappone, but we have to be harsh on the Government's lack of involvement for the last number of years. We have to be harsh in regard to how the Government has not listened to or invested in the sector. This is possibly the first time we have an affordable child care scheme. Unfortunately, it is not up and running for September as would have been the wish of the Minister at the time of the last budget.

We support the motion wholeheartedly. I read the motion last week when it was published and there was nothing in it that I could find fault with. It is something my party, Fianna Fáil, and I have been canvassing for, talking about and lobbying for the last number of months and years. It is the sector that looks after our most vulnerable and protects our most precious. I worked in the sector for three years. I was a manager of one of those community crèches. Those are the crèches I feel passionately about. I believe that is the part of the sector that is sellotaped together at the moment. I fear for the future of the community crèches sector, as I do for all child care providers at the moment. It is a sector receiving CPR. It is haemorrhaging the retention and development of child care professionals. Some of them do not see a future, and I will tell the House why. If they are out sick, they only get paid for the three days because that just happens to be the way the employment law stands if someone is out sick more than three days. Therefore, one cannot get sick if one is a child care worker.

There is a fear of not being able to borrow, get a car loan or go for a mortgage. Why is that? The simple reason is that they are worried whether they will have a job next September, whether the funding will come through and whether they will have the numbers in the rooms. Those are the questions that the manager of the crèches is worried about. She is worried about the sustainability of her own business, but the staff working in the sector do not know if they have a future from 1 September one year to 1 September the following year. If they are working on temporary contracts from year to year, they do not know whether or not they have a future in the sector. Some of my colleagues are going to talk about what happens when we hit the summer. That is one of the biggest issues. The eight weeks are up now. The centres have all had their graduations. Much of the sector has finished up. Where are the staff now? We all know.

Unfortunately, the lack of legislation, the lack of ICT and the breaking of promises have been the cornerstone of the current Administration and the previous Government. They have put the child care sector on the back foot and have left it feeling vulnerable, under-appreciated and under-resourced. When the previous Government hit the rock with the child care sector, it gave it community employment workers. That is what got it out of the pinch and allowed it to afford to keep the community sector going. It gave the sector community employment workers. It allowed it to come under the ratios and it gave community employment workers the opportunity to go into the community crèches to achieve sustainability. That is my opinion. When one does the sums, it is in there as well.

Fianna Fáil has been very consistent in its support for the child care sector and has been vocally critical of the Government's continuing failure to invest in the sector. Under this Government, policy in this area has been haphazard and poorly thought out, as shown in the debacle over the single affordable childcare scheme and failings relating to ICT. The Sinn Féin motion seeks an independent early years service cost and sustainability review of the child care sector. Fianna Fáil is entirely supportive of this. Indeed, this work is supposedly happening with the Department. From my questions to the Minister yesterday, I know that we have yet to send it out to tender and there is a timeline for that. The child care sector is still a rapidly changing and dynamic sector and it is crucial that we gain a deeper insight into the sector in order to build better policy. For example, nobody is fully certain regarding the differing costs of child care from infants to toddlers to waddlers to preschoolers. To build on the non-contact and continuing professional development capitation grants paid to providers, we will provide a better professional development fund to aid child care workers in their upskilling. Deputy Ó Laoghaire said earlier that anybody who works in this sector did not join it because they love the money. The money would be one reason not to join the sector. They join the sector because they love children and are passionate about what they are doing. They would like it if they could go on training courses and gain more knowledge to bring it back to the centres, be it through art and crafts or updating their first aid knowledge. Occupational first aid for people within the sector is so expensive but they all want and need to do it. These are the kind of courses they want and they need for funding for it.

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