Kathryn Reilly (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. Many of my comments will echo some of those made already. The importance of early years education to the overall education system cannot be overstated. However, more could be done when it comes to supporting the area that will provide children with the building blocks for their education, essentially for the rest of their lives. My party has recently expressed concern at findings in OECD reports comparing vision of early childhood education in Ireland with other countries. An estimated 63,000 children aged three to six years participated in the free preschool year introduced in 2010. The estimated cost of the scheme is around €166 million. A 2005 National Economic and Social Forum study estimated that on average more than €7 of returns are achieved for every €1 invested in early childhood education. Previous speakers have mentioned that this in itself is an economic return, which is why we need to invest heavily in it from the beginning. Given the gains that can be made, it is alarming that early childhood education accounts for 1.7% of overall education spending, which is more than nine times lower than that of Hungary where the amount spent is approximately 14.1% of education spending. Ireland's is the lowest amount in the surveyed sample. To put that in context, when compared with the second lowest level of relative expenditure by the UK, it allocated more than three times as much of its education budget to early childhood.

Clearly, what is needed is an increased commitment to early years education. To begin with, we would like the Early Start preschool project extended to all schools in disadvantaged areas with the maximum child-adult ratio of 12:1. Ideally, we would like to see introduced a universal preschool session of, perhaps, 3.5 hours per day, five days per week, for children aged three to five years. More than €320 million has been taken out of early childhood care and education in recent years, and in many services practitioners' hours are being cut. They are forced to maintain quality through voluntary hours. The Minister for Children and Youth Affairs should consult those in the sector to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the resource level and policy development required to ensure quality for children and families.

There is a clear need to increase the qualification standards of child care staff further. While the introduction of the minimum FETAC level 5 qualification standard in September is a welcome development, I do not think it will help achieve the European target of a 60% graduate-led workforce by 2020. An emphasis needs to be placed on supporting the large number of practitioners already holding a level 6 qualification with routes to level 7 and level 8 programmes. Courses are not available in many areas of the country, and where they are available, they can be seen to be prohibitively expensive. A more robust, consistent and regular inspection system should be developed. The inspectorate has been increased through the employment of additional public health nurses. The proposed model means, however, that inspectors will be lucky to complete two inspections per week. At this rate, the inspectors will not be able to cover the services in a reasonable timeframe. Inspection reports are being published online. While this is a good thing, inspectors are spending so much time getting reports ready for publication that they are not carrying out enough inspections. The need for more inspectors could be addressed in part by employing additional early years professionals as well as public health nurses to carry out inspections. The inspections are part of supporting quality delivery and, as such, are welcome by providers once they are conducted by professionals who are qualified and have experience in early years care and education.

Those are my main comments. I do not wish to labour the issue and repeat comments already made and I thank the Minister for coming in.