Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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For young families to succeed, childcare must be affordable, accessible, of high quality and sustainable. I welcome the Minister's commitment to ongoing learning and listening to providers, parents and guardians. However, despite significant increases in funding and the welcome and ambitious First 5 strategy, Ireland still has one of the most underfunded childcare systems in Europe, failing to meet the EU average of UNICEF targets for investments. We have one of the highest costs of childcare in the OECD. It is over half the average wage in Ireland.

In the early years staffing survey report for 2021, 97% of providers said they feel low pay and staff leaving the sector will have a negative impact on the provision of services. More than 70% found it extremely difficult to recruit staff in the past 12 months and 42% of early years educators are actively looking for a job outside the sector, with 75% identifying low pay as the reason for leaving the profession. Providers and educators in 4,500 early years and after-school settings in Ireland stepped up during the pandemic and the provision of quality care and education to children has been highlighted as a critical contributor to a functioning society and economy. We have to get this right in the future.

I have met and engaged with stakeholders on this. I have met and listened to providers, parents and staff. This weekend, I am meeting more stakeholders in Carlow and Kilkenny to discuss the issues in advance of budget 2022. That will be crucial. They have told me Ireland's early years system is not working for parents and is failing the educators. Underfunding of childcare has led to a lack of options for educators who leave the sector, providers who close their doors and parents and guardians who cannot afford it.

Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent)
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I am pleased to raise the hugely important issue of early years childcare services and the need to provide adequate funding in the next budget to ensure sustainable and accessible childcare services for 2022 at least. I do not say it lightly but there is a crisis in the sector. Early years educators are expected to work for approximately €12 per hour. That is untenable. Is it any wonder up to 50% are actively looking for employment elsewhere? Early years professionals, 98% of whom are women, are among the lowest-paid workers in Ireland with 50% earning below the living wage. That is the value we put on early years education. In the Netherlands, the hourly wage is €26 per hour. In France, it is almost €20. In Germany, it is €18. In Ireland, it is €12. An additional €75 million is the minimum needed to improve pay scales and to ensure all staff earn above the living wage.

Parents in Ireland pay the highest fees in the EU. They are, on average, about €184 per week. Compare that to Sweden, which I acknowledge is at the lower end, where childcare costs €31 per week. If the Minister were to invest a further €75 million in the upcoming budget, it would help ensure affordability for parents and, therefore, access to high quality, sustainable services. I seek the Minister's commitment on that.

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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I thank the Deputies for their contributions. It is a key priority for me as the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth to improve the affordability, accessibility and quality of early learning and care, ELC, and school age childcare, SAC. Historically, there have been low levels of investment in ELC and SAC in this country, although in the past five years we have seen a 141% increase in investment. That stands now at €638 million per year. This increase has funded a second year of the early childhood care and education, ECCE, preschool programme, an access and inclusion model, AIM, and enabled the introduction of the national childcare scheme, NCS.

Deputy Murnane O'Connor referred to First 5, the whole-of-government strategy for babies, young children and their families. That was published in 2018 and committed to at least doubling our investment in ELC arid SAC by 2028. A key vehicle for ensuring that such significant investment delivers for children and families will be the new funding model. An expert group is leading on this work, which will include the development of appropriate mechanisms to fund services that will improve affordability, quality and sustainability and address issues such as staff pay and controls on fees paid by parents. The expert group has undertaken extensive research and consultation and I expect to receive its recommendations in November of this year. Its work has been informed by an in-depth process of stakeholder engagement and consultation, undertaken to capture the perspectives of parents, those who work in the sector, providers and representative groups. Included in the expert group's terms of reference is a mandate to explore how greater public management of the sector, supported by greater public investment, can help deliver these policy objectives.

The draft guiding principles developed by the expert group states:

The funding model should be based on an acceptance that ELC/SAC is a public good... It should seek to support the delivery of this public value through the provision of high quality, affordable, accessible, and sustainable ELC and SAC services.

It also states that the funding model should make best use of the available public management tools. I expect this principle will inform the report of the group.

In recent months, I have met representative groups from the ELC and SAC sector to discuss, among other issues, the level of funding in the sector. These meetings have been really useful in orientating me and my Department's plans. In terms of budget 2022, my officials and I have received and considered pre-budget submissions from a number of representative groups and this will inform our budget bid.

Both Deputies raised the issue of pay and I firmly believe the level of pay in the sector does not reflect the value of the work that early learning and childcare practitioners do for children, families and society. I am doing all in my power to address this. As the Deputies are aware, the State is not the employer and the Department does not set wage levels but my Department has provided a range of supports to service providers to enable them to provide better wages and working conditions, higher capitation for graduate payments and support for school age childcare to make it more attractive.

Last December, working in partnership with SIPTU and Childhood Services Ireland-IBEC, I began a short process investigating the potential of a joint labour committee for the sector and how it might support a better wage rate. We engaged Dr. Kevin Duffy, former chair of the Labour Court, to chair the process. Following that, I wrote to the Minister of State, Deputy English, and he has since signed an establishment order for a JLC for the early years sector. I regard this as an extremely significant and welcome development. I know it has been welcomed by both employers and workers in the sector.

Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister and welcome the information he gave. As we have said, despite their qualifications, most early years professionals are earning below the living wage of €12.40 an hour. That is unacceptable. I welcome the Minister's reference to a new funding model. Will that model include a clear career path for educators and a clear guide to supports for providers struggling to sustain businesses under a significant administrative burden, which includes inspections, increased commercial rates and insurance costs? There are many issues on which we need to give confidence to childcare providers, parents and staff. That is going to be very important.

This is a vital sector and it must be supported. The Minister said he will look for more funding from the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath. I will be speaking to the latter in the next few days. The budget for 2022 will be crucial in this regard. I know how dedicated the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, is and how important the sector is to him. We need to get the funding right and ensure the sector is not underfunded into the future.

Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent)
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I thank the Minister for his response. I can hear that he has a real commitment to the childcare sector. He spoke about the expert group recommendations that are due in November. Those recommendations are important but they will be too late for many in the sector. The Minister must know that. There has to be an extra investment in the sector. I am saying that €150 million is needed in the next budget, which will be announced before those recommendations are published. In my constituency, there are more than 100 childcare providers employing thousands of staff. They cannot wait for the recommendations of the expert group, which I understand has the possibility of delivering a quality service. When I said there was a crisis, I did not say it lightly. I said it because, one after another, childcare providers and those who work in the sector are telling me there is one. The expert group is great but, in the meantime, I ask the Minister to make a commitment to keep the sector afloat until its recommendations can be implemented.

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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I thank the Deputies. This sector, like many sectors of the economy, is coming out of an incredibly difficult time following Covid. It is a sector that certainly stepped up during the crisis, which both Deputies recognised, particularly last January when it did not shut but continued to provide early learning and care for the most vulnerable children and the children of essential workers. How we managed to deliver that was through the employment wage subsidy scheme, EWSS, and the sector exemption for childcare that I negotiated with the Department of Finance at the time because we knew, with the pods arrangement, that providers had an obligation to have more staff on site, which required greater funding. We provided that through the EWSS. All the providers I have met have recognised how important that support was up to this point. They also recognise that we have been very clear there will not be a cliff edge in terms of the EWSS and that the support will be tapered out.

We are now looking beyond Covid. Budget 2022 is the opportunity to move us beyond this period to start to implement the recommendations of the expert group. Those recommendations will not come as a surprise to us on the day they are published in November. I have been engaging with the group and I have a sense of the key elements. Everyone in the sector has a sense of those key elements and they will form the basis of my engagement with the Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, and my other Government colleagues in the context of budget 2022.

It is essential, as Deputy Murnane O'Connor said, that we provide a career pathway for workers in this sector. We have a workforce plan for staff but it requires them to see that they will get a living wage as they move on through their career. One of the most depressing things for me in this regard was talking to a constituent I know well, a young woman who has just graduated from a third level institution and who left the sector after working in it for three months because the pay was so bad. We must give people like her a future in the sector. The actions the Government is taking will do that.