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

I thank Deputy Collins for raising this issue. I can confirm that officials from my Department met with representatives from the Inchicore Childcare Professional Group earlier this year, as the Deputy mentioned. As the Deputy has outlined, at this meeting the group submitted a report on a wide range of issues which it felt were having a negative impact on the lives of children and young people in the Inchicore area. These ranged from the funding of youth initiatives to the sustainability of child care services. Many of the issues raised are those that I have been seeking to address during my time as Minister for Children and Youth Affairs.

I commend the group on a comprehensive report and assure it that my Department has been working hard to address the issues raised within it. One issue that struck a chord during the group's meeting with officials was the fact that parents from lower income families could often not afford to pay the difference between the subvention available to cover the cost of child care and the cost of delivering child care or the fee charged. This had led to a situation in which the sustainability of community-based services in the area was threatened. It also led to an unfortunate situation in which the service had to chase parents for top-up payments which they could sometimes ill afford. That is deeply distressing. To address this problem I have recently increased the amount of subvention available to many of these families by as much as 50%. Subsidies per week per child have now increased from as much as €95 per week to €145 per week. Some 34,000 children across the country are now registered for subsidies such as this.

To improve the sustainability of services, I have also recently announced an increase of 7% in the capitation my Department pays for the early childhood care and education, ECCE, scheme. This will come into effect next September. This will deliver extra income to child care services for the 114,000 children expected to participate in ECCE from that time. I have also introduced a universal, non-means tested child care subsidy scheme for children under three. This reduces the cost of child care for parents by over €1,000 per year per child. In addition, in recognition of the administrative role which child care services play in delivering Department of Children and Youth Affairs schemes, especially services such as those in Inchicore which deliver targeted schemes, I have made available €18 million in funding in 2017 as payment to the services for supporting these programmes. This funding has also been secured for 2018 onwards.

I recently announced an additional €2.12 million of funding for family resource centres. Up to €10,000 is being made available to each of the existing 109 family resource centres. In total, €16.37 million will be invested next year by Tusla in its family resource centre programme, an increase of 21% on 2017. Extra funding of €1.5 million to support the provision of youth services throughout the country has also just been announced. This brings overall investment in both national and local youth work services to €58.9 million.

While these changes may not fully restore funding to its peak they represent a hard fought step in the right direction. It is not always possible to restore specific projects that have ended but by levering additional funding into the areas of child care, family resource centres and youth work we are helping to strengthen the key services which the Deputy's group has identified as struggling from cuts made during times of austerity. I have fought hard to increase investment in these areas. Investment in child care, for example, is up 87% in three years. I know that much more needs to be done to get to where we want to be, and I look forward to working with the Deputy and hearing her suggestions in that regard.

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