Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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18. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the status of the information technology infrastructure that will be used to deliver the single affordable child care scheme; her contingency plan if the information technology infrastructure is not ready by September 2017; if her attention has been drawn to the considerable inconvenience that a lack of infrastructure would cause parents and child care facilities alike; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [15425/17]

Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the status of the information technology infrastructure that will be used to deliver the single affordable child care scheme and her contingency plan if the information technology infrastructure is not ready by September.

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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Intense preparations are under way to deliver our ambitious goal of turning our child care system from one of the most expensive in the world to the best. What we are putting in place this year will benefit children and families for generations to come. It is vital we get this right. As the Deputy acknowledges, there is much work to do.

The Deputy is well aware, as a member of the Committee on Children and Youth Affairs, that the committee is involved in progressing the necessary legislation and there are business processes to be developed and data protection issues to address as well as a new and robust IT system.

We will need to integrate data from the Department of Social Protection and the Office of the Revenue Commissioners, and testing of the systems will have to be rigorous. This system must work for all families, no matter their circumstances. Despite the huge workload, my officials and those in other Government Departments and Pobal are determined that families will start getting extra money this autumn. This is our top priority. In order to guarantee these payments, some other work will take longer than expected. For example, the fully automated system will not be ready when families start benefiting from the increased subsidies. We are working with Pobal to ensure that our interim measures will deliver without any excessive administrative burden.

I do not want to put any extra unnecessary work on parents or the dedicated providers. I fully recognise that people need information. In the next few weeks, I will be in a position to provide a detailed update on delivery plans. Full information will then be made available to the public. However, let me emphasise that this is a huge undertaking. A rushed system which does not work would be a major setback which could take years to correct.

Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister for her comments. I hear what she is saying, that we will pay the price for a rushed effort in the long run. However, many parents and child care providers are asking what will happen in the interim, how they will avail of the scheme, how they will apply for it, where they will find the time to fill out the forms and, if self-employed, whether they will apply to the Revenue Commissioners, the Department of Social Protection or the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, DCYA. Who will take ownership of the scheme in the interim? It is clear the priority is that the parents will be able to avail of the funding; how they will access it is the question. In the interim, it is back to paper, but who will take ownership? I assume the Department of Children and Youth Affairs will do so, but where will the parents go? Will they go to the child care provider again or will they have to sit at home and manually apply for the scheme? If they apply but do not have all the information, for example, from the Department of Social Protection or the Revenue Commissioners, where will the shortfall be caught from?

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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I thank the Deputy for her questions. My Department is taking responsibility for the scheme and, as I have indicated, we intend within the next short while to outline our answers to all the questions the Deputy asks. I accept, and I appreciate that she accepts, that significant and complex work must be done in respect of the IT system and that in order to do it we need more time than we had anticipated. However, it is better to get it right because it is the basis for generations to come. In addition to continuing this substantial work, my Department has been engaged in developing a set of interim measures which we believe will work effectively to ensure that parents and providers will receive the moneys we have promised from September 2017. We will have a full information programme to identify the ways in which providers and parents will access this, and that delivery will be as streamlined as possible.

Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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There is a comfort in the Minister's answer that her Department is taking ownership of the scheme. That is fantastic because hers is probably one of the hardest working Departments.

She is right that the work required is significant and very complex. However, the providers need to know when the parents come to them to ask questions and enrol in the scheme if they are to tell those parents through which office they will do so in the interim. What are we saying to the providers? Are we saying that funding could be found for them for extra non-contact hours? There will be a significant workload for them. Does the Department of Children and Youth Affairs have any plans to announce any extra little bit of funding so that they would be able to take on the extra workload that will now be put upon them?

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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I will bring that question back to my officials as part of our lengthy discussions about the various issues. I appreciate what the Deputy is saying. The focus is not only on the interim measures being clearly communicated so that everybody knows what to do and where but that they will allow the money be delivered to providers and it is there for parents in September 2017. In addition, the focus of the work has been to ensure that the path we choose will have the smallest administrative burden possible. The way in which providers and parents engage will be different from when we have all the bells and whistles of the fully-built information technology, IT, system but we anticipate it will have the smallest administrative burden for both parties.