Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister for taking this important debate. The affordability and accessibility of child care has been brought to my attention - and, I am sure, the Minister's attention - time and again by parents, professionals working in the area and various early childhood sector stakeholders. The 2014 report Key Data on Early Childhood Education and Care in Europe, published jointly by Eurydice and EUROSTAT, is the latest in a long list of reports that cast a worrying focus on the affordability and accessibility of child care in Ireland. One of the key findings in the report is that at all income levels, the cost of early childhood care and education services in Ireland is among the highest in the OECD. In previous reports, it was highlighted as the second highest. In some cases, the cost outstrips parents' weekly mortgage bills.

Earlier, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, in a pre-budget submission to my party, cited the cost of child care as a cause of deep financial strain for suffering families. It also stated that this acted as a barrier preventing people, particularly women in low-income families, from returning to the workforce. This needs to be addressed quickly, because access to high-quality and affordable child care has a major positive impact on a child's future educational and life chances. This is a well accepted argument across the political divide, but we also need to be highly cognisant of connecting factors in the child's life, the critical importance of the family environment, welfare dependency, mental health issues and child poverty. Unless we look on both the quality of child care and family support as inseparable, success may prove too tall an order for each in isolation.

Ireland currently only spends 0.2% of GDP on pre-primary education. The Nordic countries are often referenced for comparison; Sweden spends 0.7% of GDP in this sector, while Denmark spends 0.8% of GDP. At a time of financial constraint, we need to gradually increase in our investment in this area. We must begin by adopting a targeted approach to provide greater supports to middle- and low-income families that are finding it difficult.

Prior to the Minister's taking office, my party tabled a Private Members' motion earlier this year on investment in child care and affordability. It is important that, no matter what policy initiatives are taken to address this key issue, the quality of our services is never undermined. They must be of paramount consideration. Earlier this year, a nationwide report commissioned by the Donegal County Childcare Committee brought forward fully costed proposals to address this issue for the future. At the time, the Minister's predecessor, Deputy Fitzgerald, who launched the report and who lauded and complimented it, promised to give attention to its contents. She promised to review the two schemes in place to support low-income families in respect of child care provision, including the early childhood care and education scheme. Will the Minister outline what his Department has done over the past six months to address this crucial issue?

Charles Flanagan (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy. I welcome very much the publication of this report, which provides most useful comparisons on the structure and organisation of early childhood education and care in the countries that comprise the European Union. This most comprehensive report has only recently been published and it will require careful consideration by officials in my Department.

The report provides a European-level analysis of progress in the development of early childhood care and education across the region. It covers a wide range of issues relating to early child care provision, including governance, accessibility and affordability, and is based on information provided by 32 European countries.

In Ireland, early childhood care relates to children in the age range from zero to six and is provided through private commercial and community services. We assist parents by ensuring that there is sufficient quality infrastructure and by providing support funding which enables parents to access high-quality child care services. The Government provides approximately €260 million annually to help parents with the cost of child care. This funding is provided through a number of targeted programmes which benefit approximately 100,000 children each year. In many cases these supports are provided based on the income level or social welfare entitlement of the parents and are not universal supports.

Many European countries provide early years places for children by establishing a legal entitlement to or by making compulsory one pre-primary year. In Ireland, the introduction of the free universal early childhood care and education, ECCE, programme in 2010 was major milestone in the development of early childhood services in this country. The programme represents an annual investment of almost €175 million and ensures that approximately 68,000 children have guaranteed access to high-quality preschool services each year.

The report highlights the diversity of child care services throughout the European countries. It highlights aspects of child care provision in this country which could be considered to be in the lower half of the European league. In Ireland, before 2010, the emphasis was on ensuring there was sufficient infrastructure to meet the increased demands of the expanding Irish economy. The considerable capital investment made in this area between 1998 and 2010 has ensured that there is sufficient child care infrastructure, and the emphasis must switch to addressing quality issues and providing services that are affordable and accessible to this and future generations of Irish children.

Some of the issues raised in the report have already been identified in the early years quality agenda which is being advanced by my Department and on which considerable progress has been made. For example, on the issue of qualifications of staff working in the child care sector, the report highlights the fact that Ireland is one of two countries where no minimum formal qualification is required. The matter has been addressed and the necessary legislative changes are coming into place to ensure that by 2015 all staff will have a minimum level of educational qualification if they are to work directly with children in the child care sector.

The early years quality agenda is designed to ensure Irish children will be in a position to enjoy standards of care and education in Irish preschool settings that are on par with the best international standards. The provision of funding to support the new learner fund to assist staff in securing the new qualification requirements and the further funding allocated to support a specialist support service for child care providers are examples of the urgency the Government attaches to improving the quality of child care services. Considerable progress has been made during the past 15 years in the development of child care services. Opportunities to further develop the child care sector have been limited because of the prevailing budgetary situation, as Deputy Troy and others will accept. However, the progress made since 2010 represents a clear commitment to improving access to high-quality child care. While we have a distance to travel, we must be satisfied that our services match the best in Europe.

Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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While I welcome the fact that the Government acknowledges that much progress was made during the past 15 years, during the past three years, unfortunately, the Government has pursued an anti-family agenda. Last week, the one-parent family payment cut-off was reduced to seven years of age. Of the 6,000 places available under the after-school scheme, which was introduced to alleviate this and of which we spoke last week during Question Time, only 40 have been taken up. The Government has reduced child benefit and announced it would tax maternity benefit one week after launching a report that recommends extending maternity benefit to one year.

I asked about affordability in particular. Will affordability be addressed in the early years strategy? When will the strategy be published? Has the Department started the review of the community child care subvention, CCS, and child care education and training support, CETS, schemes? While the Minister is working under tight financial constraints, the Indecon report commissioned by the Donegal County Childcare Committee puts forward three very realistic proposals that would ensure a targeted approach to ensuring affordability for middle-income and low-income families. One of these proposals was to extend the CCS scheme, which is capped and restricted to community providers. The previous Minister, Deputy Fitzgerald, agreed to review the proposal. Will the scheme be extended to private providers and will the cap be lifted? Will the Minister, with his colleague, the Minister for Social Protection, consider addressing child care through the family income supplement? We must stop paying lip service to this extremely important societal issue and introduce policies to address this critical problem.

Charles Flanagan (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)
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The expenditure of €260 million annually cannot be regarded as lip service. Deputies will be aware of the very stringent financial parameters within which we are operating. I accept the Deputy's point that the Donegal report is a most valuable piece of evidence and it feeds into the review under way in my Department. The issue of early childhood education will be a priority not only for my Department but for the whole Government as part of its programme for the remainder of its term. Deputy Troy has agreed with me that quality is important, that progress has been made over the years on infrastructure and that we need to examine standards and personnel in the provision of education to ensure a minimum standard across the board. We must provide access to high-quality universal education that is particularly geared towards those on low incomes and is most affordable to those who engage in the process.