Liam Fitzgerald (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and thank him for outlining developments, improvements and the establishment of structures at departmental and sub-departmental level over the past seven or eight years to address the crucial issue of the welfare and education of children. While I found I came close to agreeing with Senator Ulick Burke on some of the last sentiments he expressed, I disagree fully and fundamentally with him on certain earlier points.

Child care and early childhood education have been accepted internationally as well as in Ireland as crucial issues. Early childhood education strengthens the foundations of lifelong learning for all children. While we have been hearing about child care and early childhood education for a number of decades, there is a definite and growing consensus on these subjects. Early learning is the foundation for all subsequent learning, including lifelong learning, and early childhood offers a tremendous opportunity to enrich and extend children's learning over time. All ongoing neuroscientific research demonstrates that a child's ability to learn rapidly develops at a young age and indicates that children are innately motivated to learn and need not be forced to do so. While learning happens spontaneously, we must provide children with opportunities to engage in the process. We must create the healthiest possible environments for learning, crucial to which is the recognition that children have needs both for education and care. The Minister of State and Senator Ulick Burke referred to these needs in great detail.

Government policy in this area came to the fore on foot of the wide-ranging public consultation process on the needs of young children initiated by the previous Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Noel Dempsey, in 1997-98. From the examination of the pre-school and early school needs of children came the White Paper on early childhood education, Ready to Learn, which was referred to frequently by the Minister of State and Senator Ulick Burke. The White Paper emphasised that the focus can never be exclusively on either education or care, but must be on both. Care is so crucial to the life of a child and the environment in which it is provided is so special that Government must work on the two issues together. To attempt to work on the issues separately would be to miss out on the real gains which are there to be made.

I wish to deal at this early stage in my contribution with an issue raised by Senator Ulick Burke. While the Senator finds it very hard to accept, there has been real progress over the past seven or eight years through investment, support, the provision of increased numbers of places for child care, assistance through the equal opportunities childcare programme to which the Minister of State has referred to in detail, FÁS and the health boards. While the number of places has been expanded and facilities and quality upgraded, there is a significant lacuna which remains to be addressed. To do that, we must move towards the integration of education and care. Three issues are vitally important to deal with an effective programme into the future, namely, the quality of early childhood education and care, access to the service — to which Senator Ulick Burke referred — and proper co-ordination. Substantial additional investment will be required to target these three objectives within the overall programme. The good news, to which the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Lenihan, and Senator Ulick Burke have already adverted, is that it makes a lot of sense from an economic point of view to promote a national programme of pre-school education and care. The return is in the order of 7:1. That was the experience in the United States and that same experience is being vindicated by the National Economic and Social Forum report that was published this week. The good news is that it makes economic sense to go down this road and the most recent report published here by politicians and officials reinforces and vindicates that view.

One of the causes of the lacuna in pre-school services is that 50% of four year old children are enrolled in junior primary school and nearly all of five year olds are enrolled. Due to the fact that children here go to school at such a young age the pre-school service has not been given the same emphasis as would have been the case in Finland and other countries in Europe where the school-going age is much older. As a result of the fact that the school-going age is much older elsewhere, other countries have to varying degrees a more comprehensive national pre-school service. Our service was by and large dependent on voluntary effort. It is reminiscent of the way our adult education service developed in the 1970s and 1980s — on a wing and a prayer. The service was patchy, uneven and there was no comprehensive national programme in place. However, in the past seven or eight years there has been a definite commitment under the equal opportunities childcare programme to develop a policy of pre-school child care facilities.

Senator Ulick Burke referred to the inadequacy of what has been done over the past seven or eight years. It is true that this has been inadequate to meet present and future needs. We would be the first to admit that, but we must take into account how radically society has changed in recent years. In the past nine or ten years we have the highest population since the 1870s. Children under six years of age make up 10% of the population. Lone parent families make up 12% of households in the country. We are rapidly becoming an urbanised society. Most of these things have happened as a consequence of the phenomenal economic growth that has taken place. With all of these changes the demand has increased greatly over that period. Listening to Senator Ulick Burke, one would think that from 1994 to 1997 the Fine Gael Party had no contact with Government or no opportunity to do anything about the needs that were already in evidence and growing.