Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leas-Chathaoirleach and also thank Senators for putting this topic on the agenda.

I am delighted to be given the opportunity to address the House to discuss the importance, significance and benefits to be gained from early intervention. It is a key area of activity in my Department. The debate is an important follow-up to previous discussions here on child and family services, and most recently on youth work.

I have no doubt that all of the Senators are aware that a substantial volume of valuable research now exists on the benefit of intervention during the early years. While much of the research emanated, in the first instance, from the US and other countries in Europe, I am pleased that we have seen a number of comprehensive child-centred research projects get under way in Ireland in more recent times, not least my Department's Government funded survey entitled Growing Up in Ireland. There are now many longitudinal reports and evaluations of various pilot projects taking place. It is very good to be in a position to say that we have home-grown Irish research as opposed to relying on international research.

The international research environment involves diverse disciplines such as neuroscience, genomics, sociology and economics coming together to provide a more complete and complex picture of childhood development. Neuroscientists armed with new technologies have given us great new insights into how the brain works and what inputs are needed to optimise its development. Pioneering experts like Professor Michael Rutter, Professor Sophie Scott in the UK and Dr. Bruce Perry in the US have shown the sensitivity of the human brain in the first three years and the learning that can take place with the right stimulation. They also showed the downside. If there a lack of stable emotional attachment or chronic stress or neglect there is a great price to be paid by children, not just emotionally. We now have research that shows that there are cognitive, emotional and behavioural impacts.

A new development has taken place in the past number of years. We have begun to quantify the costs associated with early problems. For example, Professor Sophie Scott of London University has calculated that for a child with a conduct disorder the cost to the economy is ten times more than that for a child without the disorder. That is very significant so the question then relates to the interventions that we need to make.

Similarly, economists can now estimate in financial terms the short-term economic contributions of quality early years interventions and the longer-term returns on investment. Several long-term studies have documented significant savings in the areas of remedial education, school drop-out rates, welfare and crime and more international research is being carried out. Senators will be interested to hear about the international papers on this type of research and to learn that more economists speak about the long-term benefits of early intervention and the economic return. Of course I shall focus on that today.

Obviously the personal and individual return for the children and their families is a primary concern and is absolutely enormous. Economists can estimate long-term savings. In the paper that I have circulated Senators will see that reference was made to the very famous Perry Preschool Project in the United States which followed 123 children until the age of 27 years. They attended preschool for two years for 2.5 hours per day and received home visits from the teacher once a week. For every $1 invested in the Perry Preschool Project the benefit was determined as over $16. I shall also quote research by Columbia University which found that the medium-term savings to the state from investment in early care and education, over the lifetime of the child, ranged from over $2,500 to nearly $10,000 per child. There were also savings if one had the right universal programmes in place. I attended a presentation which provided very detailed economic data on savings. For example, savings were made from not having to put money into crime, addictive behaviour and detention centres. Researchers were able to track the children who had received the right interventions and estimated that very substantial savings were made. These studies were validated and evaluated.

Similar studies have been conducted in Ireland. The National Economic and Social Forum made the case for State funding for universal preschool. It stated, "It can be readily justified as the longer-term societal benefits that would accrue on the basis of the investment are at a ratio of 1:7." A very famous graph was produced by James Heckman from the University of Chicago. He won the Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences. The graph is known as the Heckman curve but I shall not go into it in too much detail. He made the convincing case for early investment. He concluded:

The returns to human capital investments are greatest for the young for two reasons:
(a) skill begets skill and
(b) younger persons have a longer horizon over which to recoup the fruits of their investments.

It is clear the kind of returns that one gets.

The return is not just economic. We also have research on the impact of educational issues. Along with the Taoiseach, I recently attended a British-Irish Council summit in Cardiff. One of the items on the agenda, and I think that it was the first time ever, focussed on the early years. Each country shared what was happening in terms of interventions and early school programmes.

Northern Ireland has benefitted from recent developments in early education. Two recent global surveys have indicated that Northern Irish primary pupils performed better in reading and numeracy tests than any other English speaking country in the world. That is the result of the radical restructuring of its foundation stage education. It was backed by an accompanying investment in training and professional development which have been identified as a key factor contributing to the success.

Research was also carried out by the Geary Institute at University College Dublin which found that, "Children who spent any amount of time in centre-based childcare prior to school entry were rated higher than children who did not experience any centre-based childcare in the domains of social competence, language and cognitive development, and communication and general knowledge. I am talking about quality child care with proper staff training and the right interventions at the right age. There are issues concerning children aged zero to three years, how best to help the age group and the kind of supports that more vulnerable children need. The latter is a topic in its own right.

Another research project has been conducted in Ireland that I shall briefly outline to Senators. I refer to the work that is being done in Tallaght, Ballymun and Darndale funded by Atlantic Philanthropies. Significant interventions in these three communities have been evaluated. There has been a whole range of interventions ranging from public health nurses working with families, parenting programmes that tackle behavioural and emotional problems, and programmes to support literacy and promote social skills and emotional understanding in children. All of these programmes impact on the child when he or she enters primary school and moves through the education system. As a result the children cope much better with various life challenges.

Increasingly we should think about putting therapeutic services into schools such as speech therapy and occupational therapy because many parents miss clinic appointments. Pilot projects in the early years sector and schools have resulted in much higher returns in terms of availing of supports. The programmes have been a real benefit. I do not need to elaborate the point much further because Senators are familiar with the benefits.

The question then is how can early intervention influence policy and the services that we deliver as a country and Government. Ireland lags behind other countries when it comes to its early years sector. That has begun to change in recent years with the introduction of the universal pre-school year but that is just one year. As many as 94% of families avail of the early school year which provides important opportunities to support children and the Aistear framework has been put in place.

We also have the community child care subvention scheme and the child care education and training support scheme. We also have a new after-school programme that provides 6,000 places. However, we have a long way to go and many challenges remain. We have major issues with the affordability and accessibility of child care here. We need to do more to support families. At this point in our development we are faced with the challenge of how best to support and regulate child minding which is an informal sector. Should it remain informal and left to parental choice? I have asked the early years group to examine whether we need to provide more support to child minders. I want to see childminders working more effectively with local child care committees to ensure that their work is supported.

We need to assess what is the best form of child care for children under one year of age. If one follows the Nordic model one will find that the extended parental and maternity leave benefits the under ones more. Parental choice is also given more support in terms of those early years. That is a vision that we ought to have.

We also need to have greater linkages between our primary education system and early years education. Norway, for example, has the same training for those working in early years education and those working in primary school. We do not have much interaction between our primary schools and our child care settings, although we are beginning to see more of that in some communities. Those challenges cannot be dismissed. We need to examine them, and that is the reason I welcome this debate.

Our preschool population has increased, according to the 2011 census, by nearly 18% since 2006. We have more children in the country, which is a massive resource. It is a national treasure offering immense potential, and it should impact on our planning in the future. Other countries are not as fortunate. Instead of seeing our child population as a cost we ought to realise its huge value, not just in terms of the children but this country's economy on which we are focusing today. We must deal with the huge economic challenges we face to ensure we can give to those children the kind of future we believe they should have.

The point I am making is that early intervention must become even more a part of our national psyche than it is at present. There is a real need for the dissemination of this kind of information to ensure we understand the difference it would make if we invest in these early years. We need to invest more. As Dr. Anne Buchanan said at the COFACE conference some weeks ago, it should be an economic imperative. We are not used to hearing such language in this country about investment in early years. We talk a lot about the economy, but we rarely link it to the kind of investment we need to make in our children. Investing in children's early years should be an economic imperative.

The OECD agrees. The 2011 economic survey of Ireland recognised the importance of investing in early years, emphasising that in order for Ireland to preserve its strengths in human capital, we should recognise the importance of preschool education having both a positive impact on later educational performance and an equity enhancing effect. The direct benefits for young children themselves are well known to the Senators.

It is a direct activation measure as well, and the potential for job creation in this area should not be overlooked. The free preschool year currently supports approximately 7,000 jobs, and every ten or 11 additional child care places we provide will create one new job. A second free preschool year could generate a significant number of jobs.

Is it realistic to be talking about more investment in this area as people who have been discussing this recently have asked in articles in our newspapers? Is it realistic to talk about universal services? We have to examine the way we spend our money in this country. Compared with Ireland, Nordic countries spend significantly more on child services, supports for families with young children, well-paid parental leave and a high proportion of child care, but they have lower poverty rates. It is interesting to see that the choices they make in terms of investment work well in terms of support to families. It also deals with the child poverty rates as well as other factors.

We have a strong history of direct cash payments as opposed to services. Clearly, families need child benefit and direct payments but there is a stark contrast in terms of what we spend on services compared with direct cash payments. That is a feature of the policies we have undertaken in this country. Given the information that is coming out about early years interventions and supports to families, it is an area worthy of discussion. There is a growing acceptance that the spend on direct services is too small a proportion of the State's overall spend, and I believe that proportion needs be increased.

The publication last month of the report of the tax and welfare advisory group raises the question of how we should reassess our overall levels of spending on service provision, in particular on early intervention and child care services, which improve children's outcomes while also supporting parents.

I have spoken here previously about the early years strategy group under Dr. Eilis Hennessy who will be reporting to the Department in the next few months. A wide group of professionals who are interested in this area will be coming forward with recommendations, which will help us to consider the kind of investment we need to make in the early years.

There are also a number of initiatives in the budget regarding the area-based poverty initiative. I have given Senators the details of those. We need to ensure that the learning from the projects I spoke about earlier is mainstreamed throughout the country because we have made the investment of ¤30 million. We now know what works and what we must ensure is that services to children throughout the country, whether they are being given by public health nurses or social workers, take the lessons from the research about the kind of initiatives that work with the families I have mentioned in terms of the parenting, the health visitors going into the family, the detailed work on literacy and the one to one work, all of which is being done in different projects throughout the country. The big task now is how we mainstream that and make sure that more children benefit from it rather than simply the pilot projects.

In the next few weeks I will be moving to establish the child and family support agency, which has a dedicated focus on child and family services. There is a significant body of work under way in the Department. We are focusing on early intervention. There is much more we can do. Further investment is justified by the figures we have and the research that is emerging. As we say, tús maith leath na hoibre. There is no question that a good beginning is a big part of the work. There are many lessons for us in the economic analysis of early intervention, and there are lessons for both our budgetary strategy and our policy development in the next few years.