Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

I welcome everyone to the debate today. I am speaking on this topic on behalf of the Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Mary Hanafin. I would like to start by emphasising the importance which the Government attaches to this subject. It is of fundamental importance to the future weIl-being of all our people. The early childhood period is widely recognised as a key source of health, well-being, socialisation and, crucially, the foundation for the lifelong learning that underpins all other aspects of life.

I will address specifically the education dimension of the early childhood period, but it is important to understand that while there is a difference in theory between early childhood education and early childhood care, the two are very closely linked. For this reason the early childhood period is a classic policy issue involving inputs from a number of Departments and agencies.

The Department of Education and Science is strongly committed to the development of early childhood education. The enhancement of early childhood services in accordance with the White Paper on early childhood education, Ready to Learn, is being undertaken on a collaborative phased basis and will draw together and build upon the many examples of best practice in early education that have emerged in recent years.

The White Paper sets out a strategy in respect of children from birth to six years of age. The key objective is to support the development and educational achievement of children through high-quality early education, with a particular focus on the disadvantaged and those with special needs. The guiding principles which underpin the White Paper strategy are as follows: that quality must permeate all aspects of early education provision; that the State will seek to build on existing provision and use the existing regulatory framework where possible; that implementation will be undertaken on a gradual phased basis to allow all the participants in the system to prepare adequately for the challenges which lie ahead; and that progress will be achieved through a process of consultation, dialogue and partnership with parents, providers and interested parties.

In order to combat disadvantage and promote education, special emphasis is being placed on the provision of appropriate pre-school education in areas of social deprivation and those with special needs. The Early Start pre-school project was established in 40 primary schools in designated areas of urban disadvantage in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Galway, Drogheda and Dundalk in the mid 1990s. The aims of Early Start are to expose young children to an educational programme which will enhance their overall development, prevent school failure and offset the effects of social disadvantage.

The approach taken in Early Start is to establish groups of 15 pupils in existing primary schools in disadvantaged areas, with each class being run by a primary school teacher and a qualified child care worker. While the Early Start curriculum emphasises the development of cognitive and language skills, due regard is also paid to personal and social development.

Some 56 teachers and 56 child care workers are employed in 16 full Early Start units serving 60 children each, split along the lines of 30 in the morning and 30 in the afternoon, and 24 half units in the mornings only. The total number of places at present is 1,680 and total expenditure is in the order of €4 million annually.

In addition, a new action plan called Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools was launched by the Minister for Education and Science last May. This action plan aims to ensure that the educational needs of children and young people from disadvantaged communities, from pre-school to completion of upper second level education, are prioritised and addressed effectively. This action plan will be implemented on a phased basis over the next five years and will involve an additional annual investment of some €40 million on full implementation. It will also involve the creation of about 300 additional posts across the education system generally.

Targeted early childhood education provision will be a key element of this new action plan. The objective is to concentrate early education actions on those children, aged from three up to school enrolment, who will subsequently attend primary schools serving the most disadvantaged communities. On a phased basis, the 150 primary schools serving communities with the highest concentrations of disadvantage will be provided with access to early education for children aged from three up to school enrolment.

The approach of the Department of Education and Science will be to work in partnership with other Departments and agencies to complement and add value to existing child care programmes in disadvantaged communities with a view to ensuring that the overall care and education needs of the children concerned are met in an integrated way.

A total of 46 pre-schools catering for approximately 500 Traveller children are supported by the Department of Education and Science. The Department funds 98% of the tuition and transport costs involved in this service. It also allocates an annual equipment grant to each pre-school and pays an additional grant of €50 per child over three years old and less than five years old. In some cases, the pre-schools also receive support from health boards, often to defray some of the costs associated with child care assistants.

The Department is developing a Traveller education strategy. The main objective of this strategy is to ensure equality of outcomes for Travellers from education. It will map out the way forward for Traveller education, taking account of the complexity of the issues involved, the history of provision and existing measures. It will mark out the challenges for the future and identify ways to approach those challenges. Pre-school provision for Travellers is being examined as part of this process. The development of pre-school services generally, outside of the specific area of disadvantage, is also a priority.

In 2002, the Department established the Centre for Early Childhood Development and Education as part of the Government's commitment to early education for all children. The remit of this centre includes the development, co-ordination and enhancement of early childhood education in Ireland. The centre has a valuable role to play in laying the foundations necessary to support developments in the early childhood area. The centre is currently developing a conceptual framework for early childhood learning that will be comprehensive in nature and will cover such issues as the following: national standards for quality in early childhood care and education, covering all aspects of provision, including environment, programmes, activities and staffing; provision for a range of supports for early childhood care and education practitioners and services; and the assessment of quality. The draft framework wiII be available within the next few months. The centre operates under the aegis of my Department and in conjunction with St. Patrick's College, Drumcondra, and the Dublin Institute of Technology. The initial operating period of the centre was three years and it is a measure of the Government's commitment to the work of the centre and to the early childhood area generally that the Department has recently sanctioned the continued operation of the centre for a further period of three years.

In order to obtain an international expert assessment of the situation in Ireland, in 2002 the Department invited the OECD to conduct a review of early childhood policies here. The OECD's dedication over many years to high-quality research leading to collective discussion and analysis of policy has earned it an extraordinarily high level of public trust and respect. The focus of the OECD review team was as follows: to place the issues around early childhood provision firmly within the Irish context; review the early care and educational policies and practices as they meet the needs of Irish children and their families; consider ongoing developments with a critical eye for sustainability; make recommendations that would make success more likely; and indicate areas for future effort and emphasis.

The review team met with many Departments, agencies and other stakeholders dealing with early childhood issues and made site visits covering a range of services for young children from four months to six years of age. It brought a wealth of international expertise to bear on the issues involved, as we knew it would, and it produced a host of very valuable recommendations across the three focus areas of access, quality and co-ordination. As the report of the OECD review team makes clear, these recommendations were offered not as hard and fast conclusions, but in the spirit of professional dialogue for the consideration of policymakers and specialists. The Department is examining the policy implications of the OECD's recommendations.

In March last year the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment produced a consultative document called Towards a Framework for Early Learning which dealt with the development of a national framework to support children's learning. Such a framework will be useful to those who are responsible for children's early learning and development. This includes parents, guardians, childminders and practitioners working in a range of settings outside the home. This framework, focusing as it does on curricular matters, will complement the development of the quality framework being developed by the centre.

In addition, the National Economic and Social Forum, NESF, has just completed a report focusing on the development of a long-term vision for the provision of integrated early years services in an Irish context. This report had three clear aims as follows: to identify what progress had been made with regard to implementing the recommendations of recent reports and policy documents; to develop a coherent policy framework for early childhood care and education; and to set out an implementation process with key targets and objectives to be achieved at policy level over the next five years.

The overall approach of the forum is evidence based and brings together the complex strands of policy and service interaction involved in developing early childhood education and care in a comprehensive way. The report sets out a policy framework and recommendations based on five principles which reflect those set out in the national children's strategy. The report clearly acknowledges the value of investment in this area which has beneficial outcomes for children and families as well as for the economy.

The NESF proposals envisage a timeframe of up to 2015 for implementation. While the NESF also favours a degree of universality in its recommendations, there is also an acknowledgement of the need for prioritisation and for targeting those families and children with particular needs. This is a measured approach which balances the need to make improvements with the need to take a staged approach to build up the necessary infrastructure and workforce.

As I stated at the outset, the link between the education and care aspects of early childhood provision is very strong. Consequently, it is important that I should briefly address the care element. The bulk of pre-school places in the country are financed by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, which has provided unprecedented levels of funding for child care in recent years. The Department of Health and Children also provides grants to child care groups, including community groups in areas of social and economic disadvantage. Child benefit has more than tripled from €38.10 in 1997 to €141.60 today. Since 1997, the Government has increased the annual provision of child care services by more than €198 million in real terms and has invested in excess of €60 million in capital projects for services for children who are at risk and their families.

In the specific context of child care — in the sense of the care and minding of children not at risk — the equal opportunities child care programme running from 2000 to 2006 has a total budget of €499 million. This programme is administered by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and received an increased allocation of current funding in the context of the mid-term review of the national development plan. It subsequently received an increased capital commitment totalling €90 million over five years, of which the first €50 million will be available for the present phase of the programme. This was done in the 2005 budget to help meet the need for centre-based community non-profit-making child care services to support parents in employment, education and training. The original intention was to increase the supply of child care places by 50% or 28,300 new places. However, commitments to date will lead, when complete, to the creation of more than 39,000 new places. Of these, some 24,600 were already in place at the end of December 2004. The programme also aims to enhance quality awareness in the child care sector and to promote better co-ordination in the planning and delivery of child care at local level.

The programme operates under three sub-measures to meet its aims and provides grant assistance in the form of capital funding for both community non-profit-making groups and for private providers; staffing supports for community non-profit-making groups in disadvantaged areas; and supports for quality improvement projects, including supports to the 33 city and county child care committees and the national voluntary child care organisations.

The total funding committed over the period from 2000 to date is more than €447 million, of which almost €392 million has been allocated to child care facilities. This includes €45.6 million in capital and staffing grants announced by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform on 22 June 2005. Over €55 million has been allocated to quality improvement measures to date.

A significant part of the remaining funding will be required for the following: the roll-over staffing grant supports being made available to child care facilities which cater for disadvantaged families; ongoing supports to the city and county child care committees; the national voluntary child care organisations; the national childminding initiative; the Partnerships for Quality Childcare collaborative initiative; the provision of capital grant assistance for the development of child care facilities in areas where there are gaps in service provision; and for the development of school age child care.

The achievements of the programme to date include the awarding of more than 3,300 grants to a mixture of community group and private provider child care facilities. On occasion, projects may be in receipt of several grants. In addition, the original target under the national development plan for new child care places has been adjusted upwards to 31,300 new child care places following positive assessments under the mid-term evaluation of the development plan. Moreover, some 39,000 new child care places will be created with funding committed to date. Of these, 26,000 new places were in place at the end of June 2005.

While this means that the expected number of child care places created will exceed the target set for the programme, the requirement for further child care places has been identified. Consequently, the creation of further quality child care places remains an important goal of the equal opportunities programme.

While there already are school age child care facilities in place in Ireland, including a number which have received funding under the programme, it is hoped that the new initiative to promote school age child care will give greater impetus to the future development of this part of the child care sector. On 22 June 2005 the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform announced the publication of a report dealing with school age child care in Ireland. The report makes a number of recommendations for the development of this sector to support the child care needs of parents, including the use of school premises where appropriate as a location to develop a quality school age child care service. The report also contains recommendations which place a strong emphasis on delivering quality in developing this aspect of child care.

The 33 city and county child care committees will have a major role in bringing forward this new initiative. A seminar was hosted by the Department for Justice, Equality and Law Reform on Monday, 26 September to further this role. Funding is being available to the committees to enable them to publicise the report locally and to identify school management authorities who might be interested in developing a service to complement and link with their schools. In addition, a national and local advertising campaign is about to be launched to publicise the initiative, as this approach to school age child care will involve the participation of parents, school management authorities, relevant statutory bodies, community based non-profit-making child care services and private child care providers. Other issues under consideration at present include the following: the introduction of appropriate fee structures for community based services to ensure their sustainability; the introduction of new arrangements for the support of community based services in areas of significant disadvantage where the parents cannot afford to contribute to the economic cost of providing a service; and the development of ideas on the next phase of the programme for the next national development plan.