Alex White (Labour)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy John Moloney, to the House. He has been having a rather rocky day, I understand, but I welcome him to the House. I am afraid I cannot agree with Senator de Búrca and I cannot go along with her congratulating the Minister or the Government on this issue.

When at some time in the future we look back over the great achievements of the past ten to 15 years in the Irish economy and society and do the balance sheet, perhaps we will see that our greatest missed opportunity in the course of that time was not to put in place a reliable, well-funded and universally accessible system of child care. We failed to do this and I do not personalise this failure around any individual Minister. Members of the Government and parties who support the Government bear a political responsibility for failing in that task. It is manifestly the case that the Government has failed in that regard.

I also attended the SIPTU organised meeting on Saturday last, to which Senator de Búrca referred earlier. It was attended by representatives and workers from community child care centres throughout the country, but mainly from Dublin city. When one attends meetings such as this one expects to see genuine anger, as the Minister of State experienced earlier today, but in a sense this was worse than anger. At least when anger occurs there is a prospect or possibility that it can be focused and ultimately achieve something. However, the feeling in this case was worse. It was the frustration of people who believe they have been completely ignored by the State.

They visited a Government office recently. I cannot remember the exact office but they were due to meet some officials — I would not seek to personalise this matter around an individual official — who were responsible for the administration of the subvention scheme. They outlined their genuine concerns regarding the pressures they are under in respect of the rates that are charged, the administrative work that is now associated with running the centres and other frustrations. However, they were told, perhaps more in sorrow than in anger, that they were not even on the radar. We know who has been on the Government's radar in recent weeks but, unfortunately, it has not been the people who run the community child care centres in our cities and towns.

One of the best things about recent days has been the explosion in debate about universalism. I have never previously seen debate at such a level. People have become politicised and are asking questions. I heard the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney, say in recent days with regard to the medical card for people over 70 years of age that we should not give medical cards to people who can well afford to pay for care. However, my position, and I understood it to be the position of the Green Party, as it was in the past, is that we should strive to provide the same excellent level of service to all members of the community, irrespective of whether they are high, middle or low earners. The way to achieve equity and ensure we can fund the provision of those services and ensure that the people who have money actually pay their fair share is through our taxation system. We are shirking this, and we have shirked it again in recent days on the other issue I mentioned.

We are shirking it in particular in the area of child care provision. As Senator Mary White correctly pointed out, the National Economic and Social Forum has made the point repeatedly, and as recently as last autumn, that the subvention scheme — our child care system is essentially a combination of the subvention scheme and the supplement — is not considered to be workable and may leave low income families at risk of not being able to continue in employment. In other words, they might have to abandon the fledgling child care services. There was little or no consultation with those who are affected by the scheme. The NESF went on to make the point, as other Senators have made in the course of this debate, that provision of early education for children in this country is one of the lowest in the OECD countries but that child care costs, relative to earnings, are the highest in the OECD, at nearly 30% of net family income. That is more than double the OECD average.

The NESF's principal recommendation is that the Government provide, free of charge, a high quality pre-school child care session of three and a half hours per day, five days per week, for all children. The forum expressed its disappointment that the recommendation had not been accepted and implemented. The Labour Party has supported this recommendation. As I understand it, and some journalists and commentators have commented on this recently, if the Government introduced the type of universal provision advocated by the NESF, the funding necessary to sustain it would be less than the current combination of what it pays in the subvention scheme and the supplement. Perhaps the Minister of State will comment on that. It is a specific statement. I understand it to be true but if it is not, I would welcome an elucidation of that point. If the Minister of State can demonstrate that it is wrong, I would like to see the figures and to ascertain whether that is the case.

Other Senators have spoken about the pressures and dilemmas faced by child care centres in respect of taking in children, the rates and trying to train and retain employees. In any sector, be it child care, education or the health service, there must be trained professional staff. Until we understand that we require properly trained people working in child care centres and that we must give them a stake in their own work and future, we will not hold onto excellent people in the way we must. We have failed to do that. People are paid very little. Of course, the background to this is that so many of these centres grew from voluntary activity, where people, often young parents, got together to organise a centre. This voluntary effort at the start evolved into a more long-term proposition. They obtained a grant and then became employers. They must now proceed as a business.

However, they are incredibly frustrated, as they made clear at the meeting last Saturday. The issues were raised in this House when we debated the subvention scheme last year. I will offer one example, the administrative requirements on these centres whereby people who are employed to run a child care centre have to engage in lengthy form filling and are obliged to inquire into the means of parents proposing to send their children to the centre. They are being diverted from the job they should be doing, that is, running and developing excellent child care centres. The frustration is palpable.

There is something lacking in this area. The Minister has said previously that information and assistance are available but the people who run the centres say there is no information or support available. Somebody is right and somebody is wrong. Perhaps the information that is available is not made available in an accessible or digestible way. Perhaps the Minister should consider holding a series of conferences or seminars, in Dublin and other cities, to train or assist these people with regard to what is expected should they be required to carry out these administrative duties into the future. Perhaps a roadshow of some description should be organised. There must be a way of addressing the information deficit for the people who run these centres. One finds incredible frustration when one talks to them. They are genuine people who are seeking to provide a service.

I welcome the remarks of Senator Mary White, the Fianna Fáil spokesperson on children. The Leader of the House often tells me I am only a new Member of the House and only learning, but it is extraordinary the extent to which Members on the other side of the House make contributions in debates with which one entirely agrees. However, it is the delivery and action at the end that appears to be woefully inadequate or non-existent. I agree with Senator Mary White's emphasis on the NESF report. She speaks as somebody who has taken a genuine interest in this issue, but I wonder to what extent the Minister of State listens to her. He does not appear to have been able to convince the Minister for Finance to deliver what Senator Mary White and others have sought.

I have a few queries about the Minister of State's speech because what he said is not entirely clear. Can he confirm what the funding is for the subvention scheme and for the sector generally? With regard to the allocation for 2009 under the national child care investment programme, the Minister of State said that he has sustained the 2009 current funding allocation at its full 2008 level. I understand that if the funding for 2009 is the same as that for 2008, it denotes a drop in real terms because it does not take account of inflation and other factors that must be knitted in. Is this correct?

The Minister of State referred in his speech to the eight major child care organisations that are supported and how they have contributed greatly to the development of quality child care. He was correct but proceeded to state, "I hope to strengthen those links in the coming months with the location of expertise from the Centre for Early Childhood Development and Education, the CECDE, into the early years policy unit of the Department of Education and Science". This should read that the Government has abolished the centre in recent weeks. When I referred on the Order of Business to our not being given the full story, this is the kind of action I mean. The centre is gone and the notion that it has been integrated into another is incorrect; it has been abolished. If we just used plain English, we might be able to make more progress in our discussion.