Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Together for Better is the new funding model that supports the delivery of early learning and childcare for the public good. It was recommended by an expert group, adopted by the Government, and has been widely welcomed by representative groups advocating for parents, children, the workforce and providers. To date, 93% of providers - well over 4,100 - have signed up. Of those, 984 are in the Dublin area.

While the large majority of representative groups and individual providers have embraced core funding, I am disappointed that one group has co-ordinated a campaign which includes calling on services to close ECCE provision on certain days. While only a small proportion of providers took part in those closures, they are not warranted considering the level of State investment taking place now. I offered to meet this group on the condition that further closures would be called off, and that offer still stands.

One of the primary demands put forward by this group is that services see an increase in the capitation from €69 to €76 per child per week for the ECCE programme, but that level of increase is already available through core funding. Core funding will now provide, at a minimum, €78.75 per week for those who sign up to core funding. There appears to be some objections to the idea of public management that is linked to the new model. In particular, there is opposition to the fee freeze and some of the requirements of financial and operational transparency.

The new funding model was designed with extensive stakeholder engagement. Since core funding was announced, my Department has hosted eight meetings of the early learning and childcare stakeholder forum and frequent meetings with provider representative groups on core funding. I have attended many of the stakeholder forum group meetings. I met with a number of representative groups over the summer and I meet regularly with individual childcare providers in my constituency and throughout the country. The city and county childcare committees have been working intensively to support services and parents. I am fully committed to working with sectoral representative groups in continuing to deliver for the sector.

See this speech in context