Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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92. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth if he will establish a publicly owned childcare service; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [19266/24]

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I hope this will expand on the conversation we have just had. Will the Minister and his Department establish a national, publicly-run, funded and owned childcare service?

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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I thank the Deputy. Reform of the early learning and childcare sector is included in the programme for Government, bringing together the best of community and private provision and the development of a new funding model to ensure an affordable, accessible, sustainable and high-quality sector.

9 o’clock

To address pressures on parents, providers and professionals, I have always stated that my goal is to increase State management of, and investment in, the sector. An expert group was established in September 2019 to develop this funding model. Under their terms of reference, the expert group was not asked to propose changes to the current model of delivery, that is, privately-operated provision, rather that it should seek to further achieve policy objectives of quality, affordability, accessibility and contributing to addressing disadvantage in a privately-operated system through increased public funding and public management. In December 2021 the Government approved the 25 recommendations contained in the expert group report, Partnership for the Public Good, and the recommendations were accepted in full by the Government. The implementation of the new funding model is well under way, backed by the record levels of State investment that this year will equate to €1.1 billion. The main part of the new funding will be core funding. Of the 25 recommendations, three are grouped under the title "Role of the State", and in particular the final recommendation states, "In the medium term, the Minister should mandate the Department to examine whether some element of public provision should be introduced alongside private provision".

In January 2024 I established a new supply management unit in my Department. In addition to undertaking more detailed analysis of supply and demand in the sector and administering capital funding, part of its remit will be to begin an exploration of public provision as called for in recommendation 25. Work on that will commence later this year. In terms of the steps I have taken, it has been about cutting costs for parents, increasing pay for staff and increasing support for providers. We are aware of the capacity and challenges but also we are looking to that longer-term public model.

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I argue the national childcare scheme is not fit for purpose. It does not fit the demand and it does not fit the need we have in this country. Parents will say to us it is the most convoluted, confusing and unfair system. I will give one instance, and I am picking up on a thing that comes to my attention regularly. Parents are penalised for wanting to spend more time with their children, if the children attend a school or use a childcare service. If parents collect their children early on occasion, it can trigger a massively convoluted attendance rule malarkey that not only impacts on the parents, in terms of a reduction in subsidies and increased fees for them, but it places an onerous administrative burden on the provider of the childcare. Excellent childcare providers are getting caught up in unnecessarily elaborate policing of parent's actions and they tell me they really do not want to have to do this. Why is it so unwieldy? Why are so many providers getting out of childcare provision because of this hotchpotch, convoluted malarkey they have to deal with?

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The Deputy is incorrect in saying so many childcare providers are leaving the system. We saw an increase in the overall provision of childcare providers last year and we saw the lowest number of them leaving the system than in the previous five years. Second, the number of children who benefit from the NCS has doubled during my term of office. That does not suggest that parents are unhappy with the system. That suggests that parents recognise the very significant investment the State is putting into the system. I recognise there is an administrative burden on childcare providers and that is why earlier this year I set out very clearly that we are putting an action plan in place to reduce administration. We are bringing in the representative groups of the childcare providers, sitting them down with Pobal and the Department and setting out an action plan on how we can streamline administration to make it easier. Some of those steps have already been implemented.

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I am afraid that in my experience, and a lot of Deputies have spoken about it in different ways tonight, the mishmash of services we have are not keeping sufficiently on top of the demand for childcare. A lot of providers are feeling pretty desperate about the sort of administration challenges they face. The reason I asked the question about the provision of a national publicly-funded and publicly-run childcare system is that Ireland is particularly low in terms of its overall spending on childcare. Out of the 38 OECD countries Ireland is number 35 in terms of the amount we spend on childcare, at 0.4% of GDP, while Iceland, Sweden, Norway and France spend nearly three times as much as do other countries. Parents struggle to find places and it is not getting easier for them. When the Minister states there is an increase in capacity of 3%, does that include the closure of so many small providers that existed in communities such as Ballyfermot and Inchicore? Loads of the small providers around the country have been closing, yet the big multiple providers are increasing their capacity.

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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I absolutely agree we are not spending enough on early years but there is a reason for that. That is because the State only started to invest in childcare in 2008-2009 when the early childhood care and education, ECCE, scheme was first set up. Prior to that, the State stepped away entirely from the early years sector. When the Deputy compares us with Iceland and Sweden, she is comparing us with countries that have invested in this area for decades. I accept the key premise of the Deputy's question but will she recognise that, in the terms of this Government's term in office and since I came into office, there has been €630 million per year of investment in this area? This year it has gone up to €1.1 billion. There are few areas of Government spending where the graph goes up so quickly in a four-year period. That money is being spent on cutting costs for parents, better pay for the staff, and better sustainability for the providers. There are challenges in all three areas. I did not say this area has been fixed but we need to acknowledge there has been progress and that I, and whoever succeeds me in this role, can continue to build on that progress.

Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent)
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I thank the Minister and want to move on to the next question.

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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To conclude, some of that may well be considered an element of public provision as well.

Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent)
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Minister, please. The time is up.