Dáil debates
Tuesday, 24 October 2023
Saincheisteanna Tráthúla - Topical Issue Debate
Early Childhood Care and Education
Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent)
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This is nothing personal, but I am disappointed. The Minister of State has responsibility for mental health and the elderly. My question relates to the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth and it is probably no wonder that the Minister, Deputy Roderic O'Gorman, is not present given the respect he has shown to date for people in early childcare. The way they have been treated is shocking and it obvious that is why he not showing his face today. It is painful for me to be before the Minister of State, pleading with her to save early years childcare providers.
Providers have received little or no support from this Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Green Party Government. The early childcare providers and I appealed to the Minister for an exact breakdown of all expenditure from the Department to funding recipients. The Minister has ducked and weaved and has not given this exact breakdown. However, every effort has been made to destroy the private early childcare providers, putting them out of business in west Cork and elsewhere.
The Department is demanding a validated financial return which must be submitted by an accountant from a registered practice or a registered professional body. This is now an added cost of thousands of euro for early childcare providers.
In her reply, I ask the Minister of State to tell me where she thinks these broke and almost broke providers can find these thousands of euro to do up these accounts. It is shocking that the Department cannot account for its own expenditure when continuously asked, but chases early childcare providers to see where they bought every rubber, pencil and topper.
The Minister treats all these providers with contempt, as does our Taoiseach. I have addressed questions to him in the Dáil and this Fine Gael leader kept answering me by saying it was the parents and the childcare providers who were inconveniencing everybody due to their strike instead of showing some sympathy to them.
The parents support these early childcare providers. They were with them outside Leinster House. They know somebody out there is siphoning money but it is not the private early childcare workers.
The Minister is standing idly by as they go out of business and his Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Green Party colleagues are backing him on his way to destroying these top-class providers. They feel the ratio of two adults to 22 children for ECC must be re-examined and a third staff member appropriately funded as children of aged two years and eight months are eligible for the scheme. It seems to the public that there is not a clear understanding of children in the Department at this time. There is simply no clear understanding of children full stop.
Have the Minister or Government members ever attended a public meeting held by the early childcare providers? I have and it was gobsmacking to hear the stories. Does the Minister realise they turn up in huge numbers and tell how they have to turn to their husbands or partners to keep their businesses open? When I hear the way these dedicated people, mainly women, are treated, it makes me and others ask what the hell is going on behind the scenes here.
I ask the Minister to be honest. Who is he protecting and who is wagging the tail here while genuine people go out of business. The Minister pretends to turn a blind eye. His colleagues in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael turn a blind eye, hoping these businesses will close and be gone out of sight.
I will tell the Minister and his buddies in government that the early preschool providers are waiting for the next election. The parents of the children who are minded by these great people are waiting for the next election. The husbands, partners, parents and family members giving these great people loans so that they can survive are waiting until the next election. They will not forget how the Government treated thousands of them.
Only a few weeks ago they gathered in their thousands outside Leinster House and outside city hall in a peaceful protest. This week, on Thursday, they will hold another peaceful process by holding an awareness day. They will all wear orange and get signatures for their petition. After this, the clock starts ticking, and ticking fast, as there will be an all-out strike in January. All this is due to inactivity and no awareness as to how the sector is being so shockingly treated.
Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Deputy Collins for raising this issue and for offering the opportunity to respond, in particular to provide an update on the threat of closures of early learning and childcare services on Thursday, 26 October.
Following a meeting between the Minister, Deputy O’Gorman, and the Federation of Early Childhood Providers, FECP, on 18 October, the Minister has been notified that these closures will now not go ahead. He welcomes this development, given the impact closures have on children and their families. With State funding in early learning and childcare at an all-time high, and set to reach €1.109 billion in 2024, the Minister and Government have demonstrated a strong track record in this policy area.
This funding is delivering two years of free preschool education to all children through the Early Childhood Care and Education, ECCE, programme. It is removing barriers to accessing and participating in this programme and in wider early learning and childcare services through the access and inclusion model, AIM, and the new equal participation model, EPM. It is supporting record numbers of families to offset the cost of early learning and childcare through the national childcare scheme, NCS, with the levels of support under that scheme set to increase again in 2024.
Through core funding, it is investing substantially in services to achieve a number of objectives, including affordability, accessibility and quality, as well as sustainability. For year three of the scheme, the allocation will increase by €44 million, or 15%, allowing further progress to be made across all of these objectives. A sum €9.27 million will support a 3% increases in capacity in the sector in year three of the scheme, driven both by new services joining the sector and existing services offering more places and-or longer hours to families.
The allocation for administration will increase by €3.21 million. The allocation for non-staff overheads will increase by €10.07 million to ensure the scheme continues to keep pace with cost pressures facing services. The remaining €21.49 million will be used for other developments, to be informed by the emerging data from year two of the scheme as well as the financial returns.
It is intended that in conjunction with the targeted measures introduced in September 2023, these developments will improve the financial standing of services and will pave the way for further negotiations to improve staff pay and conditions by the Joint Labour Committee, JLC. The Minister is committed to working with the Federation of Early Childhood Providers, FECP, and other stakeholders who can help inform these developments over the coming months.
Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent)
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I thank the Minister of State for her reply. The strike is not going to go ahead on Thursday, but there will be a collection of signatures, petitions and so on. However, the clock is ticking because there is going to be a strike on 1 January. At least now there is a chance for the Minister to wake up to this very serious situation. After the next couple of weeks, the clock will start ticking and there will be an all-out strike in January. All this is due to inactivity and no realisation as to how shockingly treated the sector has been. Doors will not open after Christmas.
The Government has been given ample time to solve this crisis, but it has buried its head in the sand on this issue. Somebody is prompting the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, onto a road of no return with these early childcare providers. Whoever is doing this has him blinded to what is going on. I plead with the Minister to step back and order the Department to immediately release funds to early childcare providers. The Government is talking about three years' time. This funding is needed immediately by early childcare providers to help them to survive. The Minister should then sit down with the sector and provide fair funding levels for all who provide early childcare.
I meet with many early childcare providers and I have turned up at all the protests they have had. These people are mainly women, although there are a few men, who work very hard and they tell me they have to go to their husbands, their partners or their families to pay the wages or to keep the lights on in their business. There is something wrong somewhere. The Minister seems to be blind to it and seems to be quite happy that they are getting plenty of money. Somebody is getting money, yes, 100%, but we would love to know where it is going. We have pleaded with the Minister continually for a breakdown of the figures but he is walking into a massive all-out shutdown on 1 January if he does not come clean as to where the funding is going.
Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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There has been extensive engagement with the FECP and the Department at ministerial and senior official levels in 2022 and 2023. The federation is represented on the early learning and child care stakeholder forum which met six times in 2022, and three times this year to date. The FECP also participated in the provider representative subgroup of the forum, which focused specifically on core funding in 2022. The subgroup met six times over summer 2022. Furthermore, a technical briefing was also facilitated by the Department on the core funding application process on 4 August, at which representatives of a FECP were in attendance.
Since coming into office, the Minister has met with the FECP on eight occasions, two meetings having taken place this year. There has also been frequent email correspondence and telephone communication and the Deputy will surely agree that is very important to keep the lines of communication open. As well as this, the Minister has committed to developing an action plan for administrative and regulatory simplification. A call for expressions of interest to contribute to this work has issued to representative groups, including the FECP.
To date, more than 93% of eligible providers have now signed up to core funding, with the second year of the scheme in operation since September 2023. I will bring back the Deputy's concerns to the Minister.