Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Anti-Austerity Alliance)
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10. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs her plans to tackle the high cost of child care in the State; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [23028/16]

Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Anti-Austerity Alliance)
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What are the Minister's plans to tackle the high cost of child care in the State? This issue seems to have fallen off the Government's agenda but it is one of the most serious issues for young families. We have the highest child care costs in the European Union. It is a second mortgage for many families. A crèche place in Dublin, for example, can cost €998 a month compared with €280 in Finland, Norway, France, Spain, Belgium and Germany. The reason for this problem is the lack of investment.

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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Reducing the cost of child care is a key priority for me and for the Government. We have a number of commitments in the programme for Government relating to enabling access to high quality and affordable child care, including subvention of child care for nine to 36 month old children. I am determined to deliver on these commitments. From September 2016, the extension of the early childhood care and education, ECCE, scheme will make free preschool available for 15 hours per week, 38 weeks per annum, to all children from the time they turn three until they go to school. Children can enter at three points in the year: September, January and April. On average, children will benefit from 61 weeks, up from the current provision of 38 weeks. Access to the average 61 weeks of ECCE can reduce the cost of child care by €4,000 per child. The current ECCE programme is accommodating 67,000 children, and this figure will increase to 127,000 next year.

We have also provided an extra €16 million in 2016 to create an additional 3,200 full-time equivalent community childcare subvention, CCS, child care places, or approximately 8,000 places based on average uptake. My Department also extended the terms of this programme in March so that it could be provided by private child care providers across the country as well as community and not-for-profit providers. This was to ensure that eligible families, regardless of where they live, can access this important child care subvention. The full rate of CCS will reduce child care costs by €95 per week and is available to parents in receipt of social welfare payments including the one-parent family payment or family income supplement.

Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Anti-Austerity Alliance)
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5 o’clock

As with the previous government, every time the issue of child care costs is raised the Government trots out the subject of the free preschool year. That scheme benefits parents who have children from the ages of three to five. Unfortunately it does not benefit anybody else. Children need care for more than 61 weeks of their childhood. The scheme offers to cover three hours child care per day, so if a parent is working, he or she must still pay for the remainder of the day's care. There is a reason child care costs in Ireland are so high. It is because the State spends only one fifth of the OECD recommendation of 1% of GDP to be spent on child care. Ireland spends 0.2% of GDP. Only the UK is worse for child care costs than Ireland - obviously we have learned from them - and even the United States has cheaper child care costs. Ireland is the worst in Europe for child care costs. An Irish family with young children pays an average of 34% of their household income on child care. In Europe it is less than 17%. When one considers the cost of rent and mortgages right now, there are people who are absolutely crippled in paying for huge rent and child care. This is unsustainable.

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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I thank Deputy Coppinger. I identified those statistics and numbers again because that investment is reducing the costs of child care. Clearly that is not enough and I absolutely agree with the Deputy on that point. I agree that the scheme works for families with children from the ages of three to five and who are entering school age, but they are making the savings at that stage of their child's life. For those families who are on low incomes, the subvention allows them to save money on the costs of child care. That is what is happening.

In addition to that measure, there is the after-school child care programme which provides care for primary schoolchildren of eligible parents for a period of 52 weeks. Eligibility is determined by the Department of Social Protection. The after-school programme provides €40 per week towards an after-school place or €80 per week in situations where the child care service provides a pick-up service from the schools. These are the other ways in which the provision of child care services does save families money. I accept that it is not enough.

Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Anti-Austerity Alliance)
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I hope the Minister will come up with something more imaginative then just the free preschool year, welcome as it is. After that provision is made, families still have to pay huge amounts in child care costs.

Ironically, the Government spends approximately €260 million per year on child care. This is about the same amount that Ireland will be paying to the EU for our leprechaun economic statistics. When one considers the figure in that context, it is very little money. There is a huge amount of untapped and untaxed wealth and resources in the State that could be used to subsidise child care. For example, if there were a progressive tax system, billions of euro could be raised to invest in child care.

The richest 300 people in Ireland hold a combined wealth of €84 billion. This is an area that could be taxed. The corporation tax rate could be reviewed which would allow for €2 billion extra fiscal space in the economy this year. Those are the kinds of measures that are required. It makes a huge difference to children if they receive quality child care rather than what is available at the moment dependent upon parents' resources.

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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I thank Deputy Coppinger for her suggestions. I would be very interested in taking a further look at them with her. We are both agreed on the need to invest more. How to do that is a complicated process of identifying the best way to deliver access to quality and affordable child care for every child but especially for children from birth to six years of age and for a diversity of families.

While it is important to reduce the costs of child care, it is also important to ensure that people who work in the sector receive a living wage. We must also ensure the scale and coverage of delivery of child care. It is true that more money needs to be provided. I have acknowledged this in my reply with regard to the children who are not yet publicly subsidised, that is, children under three years of age.