Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Funchion for introducing the motion. I would like to address two issues relating to childcare. The first issue is the short-term needs of the sector post Covid and the second is the long-term reforms that are required. I think we are all in agreement that significant reforms are required in the sector to meet the needs of families and providers.

On the short-term issue, many parents, providers and staff are worried that they do not have any certainty about what will happen after 24 August. I know that the Minister is working on it and needs time to get those plans done. The uncertainty is causing significant concern. The recent discussions in the media about capping fees have added to pressures and concerns and I am aware of a number of providers who are raising their prices. The kite flying about fee capping may be forcing them down that road. I ask that the Minister expedite those plans for the sector. It is important to give them some certainty as quickly as possible. With regard to the long-term reforms that are required, the reality is that successive Governments have failed to properly support families in this country when it comes to childcare and early education. Governments have failed to invest properly, and have failed to put children front and centre of childcare provision. While all countries throughout Europe have managed to get it right, Ireland has not. It has refused to shoulder its responsibility to support parents and to provide the publicly-funded, universal system of childcare and early years education that we need and that our children need. Instead, we are forcing children into a system that is piecemeal and under-funded. It is not meeting their needs or the needs of parents, staff or providers.

Ireland's predominantly market-driven approach to childcare has not worked. It has failed to provide parents and children with the flexibility required by modern working families. It is expensive, creating barriers for women entering the workforce. We know that the market-driven model has not worked for the majority of childcare providers either, since they have been saddled with layers of bureaucracy and over-reliance on Government supports because they cannot compete in a full free market model. This approach has also riddled the sector with chronically low pay and little job security for early childcare workers and professionals.

It is evidently clear that we need to move away from the existing market-driven approach and towards a public service model which has the child at its centre. Not only will this address the sustainability issues within the sector, it will benefit our children as well. We can see this in other countries which have similar provision of childcare. Available research has identified positive outcomes of public early childcare programmes including improvements in children's social and emotional development. Increasing investment in a public childcare service is not just beneficial to the economy. It benefits children's development and that will affect their outcomes later in life. We need to look after our children. If we get childcare right, everything else will follow.

We do not need to reinvent the wheel. We need to look towards other countries to see what works and to identify where Ireland is falling down in comparison. Ireland has the highest level of private provision of early childhood care and education in the OECD, along with relatively low Government investment, low wages for educators and high fees for consumers. Some 99% of children attending pre-primary education were enrolled in private childcare institutions compared with the OECD average of only 34% and the EU average of 27%. That is a shockingly high number and shows where we are going wrong.

The evidence base also indicates that in countries where there is public provision, childcare tends to be more affordable, accessible and of higher quality than in private provision countries. The OECD states that the predominance of public childcare institutions in the EU reflects a policy shift towards public provision in this sector. It states that sustained public investment is vital for the growth and quality of early childhood care and education programmes. Further, if these programmes are not sufficiently subsidised, the ability of parents to pay for childcare will greatly influence the participation of children from disadvantaged backgrounds. That means our current market-driven model perpetuates educational disadvantage from when the child is an infant. That is a shocking indictment of the current system.

In 2016, despite tripling of public investment in childcare programmes between 2011 and 2016, Ireland spent the second lowest amount on education for three to five year olds in the OECD as a percentage of GDP. In comparison, Norway, Sweden and Iceland each spent 1% of GDP, which is more than double Ireland's spend of 0.4%. Our model reveals that we have the worst of both worlds. Not only do we have a high level of private service provision in the country, we have some of the lowest levels of public investment in the sector.

The current childcare model creates a two-tier workforce, reducing the workforce participation rate by women. This is something that I have raised repeatedly in this Chamber, especially since Covid struck, because it has highlighted the vulnerabilities in our system. I have a fear that once we get to September, if there are issues opening the childcare facilities or schools, it will be predominantly women who have to shoulder that responsibility, whether by taking time off work or seeking more flexible work, which means that they are moving out of their role in the workforce. That is not something that we can afford to happen because if it happens in September and October, it will be with us for years. It will take a long time to roll back on that issue.

The Parliamentary Budget Office identified a higher workforce participation rate among males than females in the 25 to 44 age group in Ireland. We can see the gender gap, which is larger in Ireland than the EU average. In 2018, a study conducted by the ESRI found that mothers with higher childcare costs when their child was three tended to work fewer hours when their child was five.

This indicates that high childcare costs are a barrier to maternal employment. Lack of childcare supports also affect maternal well-being and this is important to acknowledge. Greater investment in childcare increases maternal life satisfaction, which in turn benefits the child. Covid-19 has revealed the stress on women who have taken on the burden of childcare and school closures, and who have been affected disproportionately by the public health crisis. Without providing clarity and direction urgently, the challenges for this sector and for families will just be compounded, with a serious impact on the capacity of women to return to work. This will have an impact on both women, their children and their families and on the economy. We can put as much money back into businesses as we want but if we do not have the staff to work in those businesses it is really all for nowt.

In Ireland, despite the relatively high fees, details of which we have heard much about tonight, the wages of workers in the childcare sector remain low. The average hourly rate for early years is €11.44, which is below the living wage of €12.30 per hour. These are the people we want to care for our children and to educate them. We are not valuing these people enough to pay them a proper living wage. This sector employs approximately 30,000 people and has some of the most highly qualified professionals who are paid some of the lowest wages of any sector, with many existing on minimum wage rates. Last week, the Social Democrats acknowledged the chronic problem of low wages in the sector by introducing a motion calling for a living wage. The Government shot it down but I believe the message came through from the public that we no longer want to see workers who educate and care for our children exploited and undervalued despite the incredibly important work they do. I made a point in my speech last week that it is no coincidence that sectors which are predominantly female have some of the lowest wages in the country. Care work is undervalued and exploited and this has to change. This must be a central tenet to any new public childcare model that we seek to introduce.

I agree with the motion calling on the Government to fully commit to implementing pay scales and full continuous professional development for all staff, and which properly values childcare as a viable long-term career choice, and I hope to see some commitment by the Minister on this today. The evidence proves that Ireland's market-driven model does not work. It does not work for children, parents, staff or providers. We need a tailored public childcare model that meets the specific needs of children, families and communities but which also incorporates the 3,000-plus small providers who have invested so much in the sector when Governments have failed to do so. Using evidence-based approaches, we need to visualise what kind of national childcare service we want, one that puts children front and centre of the system. A pathway towards implementation must also be matched by investment, the likes of which we have not seen to date but which will be absolutely necessary if we are going get this right.

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