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

I thank Deputy Ó Broin for raising this issue. I will restrict my comments to the questions relating to my Ministry, although I heard the Deputy raise some other issues there also.

To provide some context for this discussion I will start by stating that I have been fortunate to secure an unprecedented increase of 117% in investment for early learning and care and school age childcare in recent budgets. This extra investment has supported a doubling of capacity in the sector. It is clear, however, that further capacity is required and that is why I am continuing my intensive efforts in this area.

One of the priorities for my Department’s capital programme is supporting childcare providers to extend their existing services, or to establish new services, where need or demand exists. The decision on where to target capital spending to support policy aims is informed by an analysis of the current state of the childcare sector, by learnings from previous capital programmes and by feedback and input from stakeholders, including childcare providers and data from Pobal and other sources.

With regard to the specific areas mentioned by the Deputy, while my Department’s capital programmes do not routinely target one specific geographic area over any other, the assessment of capital applications has regard to issues of need supported by the use of specialised assessment tools, including Pobal’s geosparcity index. This is considered the fairest mechanism to meet the needs of all areas having regard to the available funds. All applications are appraised in a fair and impartial manner and solely on the basis of the quality of their application.

My Department’s 2019 early years capital scheme has a primary focus on building places for the under-threes. I have made €4 million available for this age group, which is expected to result in 1,321 new places for the zero to three age group being created. An additional €1 million has been made available for the creation of 2,308 new school age places.

On childminding, I was delighted to secure €500,000 in budget 2019 to recruit a national childminding co-ordinator and a team of six development officers in the State, to support the registration of more childminders with Tusla, and thus enable them access subsidies under the national childcare scheme. My Department will publish a childminding action plan in the coming months to follow through on the commitments in the First 5 strategy and the programme for Government to further develop the childminding sector.

With capacity issues more generally, each year Pobal conducts research on behalf of my Department to examine a number of factors related to childcare services in Ireland, including capacity. The latest early years sector profile report, based on a survey completed in May 2018, outlines a 4% vacancy rate as a percentage of children enrolled in Dublin. Pobal reports that nationally, the trend for waiting lists suggests a reduction in waiting lists for older children and an increase for under-twos. Pobal cautions that its data on waiting lists cannot be used on their own to inform capacity decisions, as parents often place their children on more than one waiting list.

Finally, if the Deputy is aware of any specific cases of parents - and he may have identified one or two - who are having difficulty accessing childcare places, they could make contact with their local city or county childcare committee, which will be pleased to assist them.

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