Mary White (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister on the delivery of her brief in education and please God it will all work out for the best. In addressing the issue of economic and equality goals and early childhood care and education, I believe and all the evidence shows that the benefits of early childhood care and education accrue disproportionately to those children who are economically disadvantaged. As such, the goals of equality and economic development coincide in this policy field of early childhood care. Education disadvantage can be discussed in terms of the accumulation of well-established warning signs. UNICEF presents the following individual at-risk markers: a home in which children or families experience poverty, unemployment, low parental education, substance abuse, mental illness or cultural and language problems.

From my experience, in my 24/7 engagement with Lir Chocolates, the same applies to a young person who has been unemployed for a long time and gets a job. If a young person struggling to do a job comes from a family where they are the third generation that did not have a job, and if there are any of those issues, such as substance abuse, mental illness or cultural and language problems, it is very difficult for that person to engage and have the emotional stability to be able to do a job for the day. It is the same issue if there is disadvantage at home. They cannot hold on to a job. I have seen it myself. A father of a young man whom we took on from the long-term unemployment list told me that he was going to Mass every morning to pray that his son would be able to do the job every day. Another young person who had brilliant potential was going home at night to parents who were drunk.

I approached the then Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Development, former Deputy Mary Harney, to ask if she could establish a mentoring service for young persons going home to such a setting. Generally, parents encourage their children to develop a work ethic. However, some young people who are trying to hold on to a job need a mentor to compensate for the lack of emotional stability at home. I asked the then Minister to establish a mentoring system for them, but she did not engage with the idea. I had a formal meeting with her, but, to be honest, I did not get anywhere. There are many young people with similar problems.

In 2005 I compiled the first report entitled, A New Approach to Child Care Policy, and compiled the second in 2006. I gave marks and credits on the issues that had been followed up. Fianna Fáil introduced the first free child care services. I put pressure on the then Taoiseach, former Deputy Bertie Ahern, who responded positively and said it had to be done. The momentum generated by a by-election in County Meath where parents were seeking child care facilities, coupled with the pressure I was putting on the party, helped to achieve early childhood care services.

A large body of research in the social sciences, psychology and neuroscience shows that skill begets skill and learning begets learning. All of us who are privileged to be here know this. There is strong evidence that once a child falls behind, he or she is likely to remain behind. To some extent, the basis for future learning and social and emotional development is set before a child starts at school. Thus the foundations of policy lie in the realisation that learning abilities are formed during the early years of childhood. As a former school principal - an príomh múinteoir - Senator Jim D'Arcy knows only too well how learning begets learning. As an educationist, Senator Sean D. Barrett knows that the more one learns, the more one wants to learn. When children do not have a good start in life, early intervention is essential, as generally schools are ill equipped to remedy a bad start. Studies of the relative return on skills investment in early life show that such investment yields the highest return from age nought to six years and climbs exponentially thereafter. The return is especially high for underprivileged children. The OECD argues that early investment is vital. Such investment needs to be made in the exploratory years of early childhood relative to the Facebook years of later childhood. Spending in the early years can be more effective than expenditure on adults. An analysis undertaken for the European Commission showed considerable evidence that education and training policies targeting low-skilled adults had often been ineffective. Meanwhile, the little European evidence that is available shows that early investment has important and long-lasting effects for children.