Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising what is an important issue. It has always been my view that, historically, Ireland has been slow in respect of the early years sector. So rapid is the development of a child, human beings learn more from birth to the age of three than they will in the rest of their lives. From birth to six years of age, we need to provide the best of education and developmental opportunities for children. As things have evolved in Ireland over the past 30 years we have had community-led early educational childcare services. That became more organised through many private providers and some State providers, some of which focus on disadvantaged communities and others on special needs. There is no doubt in the past two to three years there has been a substantial increase in funding and an expansion of childcare services. In last year's budget, the focus of the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, which I supported, was to improve pay and conditions and the overall environment and career pathway for people working in the early education sector. There was good news in autumn this year, following the budget and the provision of funding, when an employment regulation order was agreed, the first ever between employers and employees. I would like to see that advanced and progressed in the years ahead.

The Deputy will know there was a substantial increase in core funding in this year's budget. Last year was about trying to get significant improvements in terms of conditions for staff. This is it was about affordability for parents. Substantial resources have been made available which will result in a substantial reduction in the cost of childcare for parents. The third issue is capacity. We have to continue to expand capacity and we are open to work with the Deputy, Sinn Féin and others, in that regard.

With regard to ECCE services, that is, the sessional services where there has been a change in the model and concerns expressed by some providers, the allocation has gone up from €14 million last year to €27 million per year on top of standard capitation. That is a 90% increase this year alone. The federation had agreed to cancel the previous objective of closing services on the day to highlight issues it had. The Minister, in light of the concerns raised in respect of sessional services, in order to provide additional timely and robust data in preparation for developments to core funding in year 2, has signalled the Department will now undertake an independent review of the financial viability of small sessional services to be completed in quarter 1 of 2023. He has written to the federation regarding this review.

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