Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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23. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs if she will provide a breakdown of all new funds allocated to early child care for 2017 and the way in which this money will be allocated; the Estimates for budget 2018 to maintain the services for 2018; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [33334/16]

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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My question follows from Deputy Ryan's, in a way. There is no doubt that we need to move in the direction of assisting people with the punitive cost of child care. We also need to underpin parental choice. We need to ensure that it will actually achieve what the Minister hopes it will. Given the amount of money involved, I worry whether it can achieve that. Is the €32 million the full year cost? Given that the money will come in September, what will the full year cost be? In some cases, which I will go into, will it not achieve its end?

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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I was pleased that significant additional funding was allocated to early child care in budget 2017. The largest volume of additional funding was provided to enable the full year costs of the expansion of the ECCE scheme into a second year, and I provided €67.6 million for this. In addition, the full year roll-out of the access and inclusion model, AIM, within the ECCE scheme was provided for with an allocation of €18.07 million.

€12 million was provided to supplement existing funding provided for child care available on a targeted basis to families from lower income backgrounds. This funding will facilitate the replacement of a number of schemes with new single affordable child care scheme from September 2017. A further €7 million was provided for a universal subsidy to be available to all children using formal child care who are aged 6 months to 3 years, or when they start ECCE if they are older. This will also be available from September 2017 as part of the new single affordable child care scheme.

I have made €14.5 million available to provide an additional payment to child care providers to recognise the increasing volume of work done outside of direct contact hours with children. This funding will provide an additional payment of seven days' funding to all ECCE services and an equivalent level payment to CCS and TEC services. I have provided €1 million to enhance the level of inspection of child care services provided by Tusla and the Department of Education and Skills, and a fund of €1 million to facilitate research into the sustainability challenges faced by community child care services, in particular, and to develop a process for addressing these. This additional funding will bring my Department's budget for early years from €345 million to €466.5 million, an increase of 35% on 2016.

Additional funding will be required in 2018 to meet the full year costs of some measures being introduced for September 2017. In the case of the new single affordable scheme, estimated additional full year costs in 2018 are approximately €44 million. Factors such as demography and uptake of schemes will also be important in determining the exact amount of additional funding that will be required in 2018.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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The scheme does not start until September 2017. How long does the funding of 32 million run into next year? What is the full year cost of the universal and targeted elements? I am in favour of targeted and universal elements. I recognise that people working in child care have to be paid properly and so on, and that we need to develop capacity. Given all of those requirements and the fact that we need funding for a full year, can the funding really deliver on all of those fronts?

To what extent is the money that had been available to schemes that are now being wound up being rolled into this money? In other words, how much of the money is new money? I met a lone parent earlier. She explained that the closure of the community employment childcare, CEC, programme and the childcare education and training support, CETS, programme means that the maximum contribution those working on a community employment scheme had to pay is now gone. They will end up having to pay more. Lone parents will have to pay more. The new scheme will be a disincentive. We will not have labour activation, but labour deactivation.

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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The Deputy had a number of questions and I am with him in his sentiment in terms of his concerns. I hope that this will deliver what we are attempting to deliver. It is a first step towards introducing a radical new plan for child care. We have worked very hard to ensure it happens. I provided the Deputy with full-year costs. The year 2017 will be the first year of the full year of the second year of the ECCE scheme. We need money for that. It will also be the first year of making available the universal measure that is a subsidy for those aged under three years. That will start in September 2017. There is money available for that.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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What months will it cover?

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Let the Minister answer.

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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We need a lot of money for 2017 to cover the full-year cost of the two years of preschool plus the cost of the access and inclusion model, AIM. From September 2017, additional moneys will be available to introduce the single affordable child care scheme. This will include the targeted element in the new way that I am doing it as well as the subsidy for those under three years of age. That relates to the funding question. I did not have enough time to answer the other questions.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I think the Minister understood the other question. With the winding-up of the CEC and the CETS programmes, those who were availing of them are telling me that they will be required under the new scheme to make a bigger contribution to expensive child care from their already low incomes. Consequently, they will be in a worse position. It will be more difficult for them to go to work because the scheme is quite minimal. This is the problem. To make all these different elements work, we need a lot more money.

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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We do need a lot more money and I trust the Deputy will continue to raise his voice as we continue to prepare for the next budget because I agree with him in that regard. In terms of his initial comments and concerns, I too am concerned about those on low incomes. This new, targeted single affordable child care scheme is streamlining and simplifying those other targeted schemes that some of the people to whom the Deputy refers are on. These include the community childcare subvention, CCS, and training and employment childcare, TEC. By doing that, we are providing a way for those on lower incomes to pay less. There may be a few cases where there will not be the potential for the capping, if one likes, of the parental contribution. I think this is what the people who are coming to the Deputy are concerned about.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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That is what I am talking about.

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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I assure the Deputy that no one will be worse off. Most of them will be better off, but it will depend on what they are earning and the number of children, etc. This goes back to Deputy Anne Rabbitte's question. It is hard for people to understand fully how they will benefit because it will depend on their family type. However, the whole point of the single affordable child care scheme is to ensure that those the Deputy is speaking to ultimately benefit more.