Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left)
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9. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs if he will raise the issue of deficiencies in the area of child care here, as noted in the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child's review of the report of Ireland, with the appropriate Departments; and the steps he will take to ensure that appropriate, affordable child care is available for every child. [3056/16]

Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left)
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The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child questioned the Minister about what it described as the "deficiencies" in child care in Ireland. The deficiencies are obviously fairly glaring, given that the average amount spent on child care is 12% of income per household across the OECD and 35% in Ireland. The average cost of child care for two children is €22,000 per annum nationally. What action does the Minister propose to deal with this deficiency and what discussions has he had with other Departments?

James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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Last year, I established an interdepartmental group to consider options for future investment in early years and after school child care. This group reported to the Government last July, setting out a range of options for future investment to enhance the affordability, increase the accessibility and improve the quality of early years and after school child care.

In the 2016 budget, the Government announced additional annual funding of €85 million for the child care sector to support the achievement of many of these options. This funding represents an increase of 33% in the annual investment in child care supports and provides for the significant enhancement of a number of programmes implemented by my Department. The funding is in addition to the €260 million annual funding already committed to the sector.

The €85 million package of additional investment for child care includes funding for an extension to the early childhood care and education, ECCE, programme from September 2016 so children can enrol in the programme at age three and continue in it until they make the transition to primary school. This will reduce child care costs by an additional €1,500 per child and will increase the current 38 weeks of free preschool provision by an average of 23 weeks, and up to 61 weeks depending on the child's date of birth and the age at which he or she subsequently starts primary school.

The investment will fund a suite of supports to help children with a disability to participate fully in the ECCE programme. This delivers on my commitment to address these children’s particular needs in mainstream preschool settings.

The investment package will provide 8,000 extra places in 2016 under the community child care subvention programme to help low-income and disadvantaged families access quality child care. These 8,000 places are in addition to 5,000 places previously announced with savings achieved in 2015. We will provide a range of measures to improve the quality of early years and school aged child care, including an audit of quality, an extended learner fund to support professionalisation of the sector and an enhanced inspection regime.

Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left)
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I thank the Minister. I was struck by this issue during the episode of "The People's Debate with Vincent Browne", which the Minister managed to miss.

Finian McGrath (Dublin North Central, Independent)
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He will bottle it.

Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left)
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During the debate, the Fianna Fáil Party candidate was ochóning the cost of child care, and stated that she paid an astronomical amount of money and asked what would happen if Fianna Fáil were returned. The exact same points applied ten years ago when Fianna Fáil was in power and the Government had loads of money. The problem is that we view child care the wrong way around and the model is based on privatised child care. If we do not address this, the measures will not get to the overall root of the problem, although some of them will help some people.

After maternity leave and before children go to school, there is an enormous gap during which families are, in the main, left on their own and have to pay through the nose. Has there been any discussion about linking serious preschool as a State-run programme, like education, which every family could access? We can address it only by funding it from central taxation.

James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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I am glad the Deputy raised the issue of where I might have been on the night she was entertaining a certain gentleman.

Finian McGrath (Dublin North Central, Independent)
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Tell us where you were. Were you knocking on doors?

Seán Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, Ceann Comhairle)
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Hold on a second. Another Deputy is waiting to ask his question. The Minister has only two minutes left.

James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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I was in Fingal County Council celebrating with the six young women from Loreto Secondary School in Balbriggan who had such an outstanding achievement in the Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. We should be very proud of these young women. They showed the power of the diversity of our community and the future we all have, which we can face with confidence.

Finian McGrath (Dublin North Central, Independent)
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My God. Parish pump politics.

Seán Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, Ceann Comhairle)
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Hold on a second. The Minister has ten seconds, and another Deputy has a question. The Minister is over time.

James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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The additional funding also provides for a range of measures to improve the provision of after school child care, including a once-off minor capital fund to develop after school services in conjunction with community, not-for-profit and private providers. The Government is committed to child care and children.

Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left)
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The Minister did not address the point. Unless those very talented school leavers had received free or affordable State-led child care in their youth, the Minister's answer was irrelevant. The key issue is affordability for many people. Some 70% of women earn less than €30,000 per year. Child care for two children in a Dublin crèche costs €27,000, leaving no money for anything else. Unless we address this, all the Government's platitudes about putting people back to work are utterly irrelevant. While I appreciate that there has been some State support around the edges, the model is all wrong, given that it is essentially based on private child care. The Minister has not commented on this. Does he not think it would be better if we attached early child care or preschool in an educational context, linked to our education system, rather than a privatised model?

James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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The Government has shown its commitment by increasing the child care budget by one third. While we would love to do more, even if we had more money the sector has highlighted that there are capacity issues, and that is why we have done it in a staged and staggered fashion. We want affordable and accessible child care, and we want quality child care. I will not engage in an ideological argument as to whether it should be purely public or private. We have community facilities which are very much supported by the Government, and we have private providers.

We have made provision to expand the community child care subvention scheme to private providers in areas where there is no community facility. We understand that this is a barrier for people returning to work, particularly women. We want to remove the barrier. We cannot do it all in one fell swoop. We have an interdepartmental group that lays out a clear pathway for the future and future investment in this area, which is one of the key areas for the Government into the future.

Seán Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, Ceann Comhairle)
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Deputy Boyd Barrett, please cut out the preliminaries, given that we are over time.