James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am pleased to come to the House today to outline my Department's position on a wide range of issues relating to early childhood care and education. High-quality and well structured investment in the early years of a child's life is now widely recognised as being one of the most strategic investments we can make with public funding. Children are at a critical stage of development in their early years, and we have a golden opportunity to set children on the right path for their futures - indeed, in a very real way, for all our futures - if we invest wisely in them at this stage. For example, the benefits of participation in high-quality early childhood care and education have been widely evaluated over a considerable period, and a strong consensus exists that all children benefit significantly from participating in this kind of provision, while the greatest benefits are reaped by children from disadvantaged backgrounds. As Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, I am very concerned about the rate of child poverty in Ireland, and I know it is this kind of investment in children that will make a real impact in tackling that problem.

Of course, children are not the only beneficiaries, because when children are given real opportunities to develop to the fullest of their potential, we all benefit - parents, families, communities and the wider society and economy. It is because the Government recognises the critical importance of investment in children's early years that we worked so hard to protect expenditure in this area, despite the dire economic circumstances the Government inherited. The Department of Children and Youth Affairs invests more than a quarter of a billion euro in early childhood care and education each year - and that is before spending on children by other Departments is taken into consideration. I, along with many parents and practitioners working with young children, would like that figure to be higher. We are well aware that Ireland's investment in this area is lower than in many other OECD countries. Currently, the Government is constrained in its ability to significantly increase that investment, as the recovery in public finances is not yet complete and resources remain limited. Further, as Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, I am committed to ensuring that every euro we invest in our children is invested wisely. Today, I would like to outline some of the work we are undertaking to realise that goal.

Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures, which isthe national policy framework for children and young people, commits us to developing an early years strategy to create an innovative and dynamic blueprint for improving the lives of children in their early years, from birth to six years of age. The early years strategy will address a range of issues affecting children in their first years of life, such as child health and well-being, parenting and family support, learning and development and play. The strategy will also address the future development of the early years sector itself. Considerable work has already been undertaken on the development of the strategy. The work of the expert advisory group, Right from the Start, has greatly informed progress to date. In the interim, the Government has continued to progress policy initiatives for children in their early years. I have welcomed, for example, the introduction of free GP care for all children under six recently announced by my colleague, the Minister for Health. I have signalled my intention to conduct focused consultations with relevant parties across the early years sector before concluding my own deliberations on the strategy. I am also mindful of the importance of other work that is being undertaken in parallel in respect of the future investment priorities in early childhood care and education. Taking account of these developments, I expect to be in a position to publish the early years strategy once my own consultations have concluded in the coming months.

I would like now to discuss in more detail current developments in child care. As I mentioned earlier, the Department of Children and Youth Affairs makes a considerable investment in child care provision, at approximately €260 million per annum. This investment supports more than 100,000 children and their families. Most of the funding is directed towards three national child care programmes: the early childhood care and education programme, otherwise known as the free preschool year, or ECCE; the community child care subvention programme; and the training and employment child care programmes. The early childhood care and education programme is universal and provides for a free preschool year for all children in the year before they start primary school. Approximately 67,000 children avail of the programme each year in more than 4,300 services nationwide. Currently, the cost of the programme is approximately €175 million per annum, which translates to an annual reduction in child care costs for parents of approximately €2,300 per child.

In Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures, the national policy framework for the period 2014 to 2020, the Government made a commitment to introduce a second free preschool year within the lifetime of that framework. To realise this goal, we need not only to secure the considerable resources required, but also to ensure that the service offered is of sufficiently high quality to achieve the outcomes we want for our children. That is a critically important point. Very often we spend money with the best of intentions without realising that it is not delivering the outcomes we require because we have not assessed it or carried out an evidence-based study. I know that is a point that is well understood by child care providers, and it is the reason work on the early years quality agenda - involving a range of actions on which I will speak in more detail later - is so important.

The community childcare subvention programme funds community-based not-for-profit child care services to enable them to provide high-quality child care at reduced rates to parents on low incomes. For example, parents qualifying for the higher subvention have their child care costs reduced by €95 per week. Each year, more than 25,000 children benefit from the support of the programme. To ensure that access to subvention funding is not a disincentive for parents to return to employment, the programme allows parents in receipt of the higher level of support, and who secure employment following initial enrolment, to retain that level of funding support until the end of the school year in the same service, and also to have a reduced level of funding support for one further school year.

Finally, a range of initiatives provided under the training and employment child care programmes support parents who are returning to training, education or the paid workforce. These .include the child care education and training support programme, which provides child care places to qualifying SOLAS or education and training board trainees or students for the duration of their courses. This programme provides €145 per week towards the cost of full day child care, with pro ratarates for parents who receive a reduced level of service.

The after-school child care programme provides after-school care for primary school children for certain categories of working parents for a once-off period of 52 weeks. This programme provides €40 per week for after-school care, or €80 per week where a pick-up service is provided, and €105 per week for full-day child care during the holiday period. Pro rata rates apply for parents who require support over a shorter weekly period.

The community employment child care programme provides up to €80 a week to support qualifying parents who are participating in a community employment scheme.Following a number of enhancements to this programme, part-time care is now provided for children up to the age of 13 whose parents are participating in this scheme. The upper age limit was previously five years. A further enhancement to this programme includes an after-school option which enables qualifying parents of primary school children to obtain after-school care at a weekly cost of €15.

The Department is looking at ways to improve this investment in early childhood care and education. We are also placing an increasing emphasis on improving the quality of early years services. For example, we are working to improve the early years regulatory and inspection regime. The current inspection regime is being strengthened because quality is so important for children, parents and practitioners. Children deserve this, parents demand it, and for practitioners, a robust regulatory and inspection regime is critical to maintaining confidence in one of the most important investments we can make in a person, high quality early childhood care and education.

A new registration system is being introduced that requires early years child care providers to register with Tusla's early years inspectorate before they open. The inspectorate will inspect services before registration is granted, and there will be ongoing inspections of all aspects of early childhood care and education once the service is operating and children are attending. This early years inspectorate is now managed by Tusla on a national basis and inspectors are working to common standards. The inspection tools and the report format have been reviewed, and new inspection arrangements will accompany the new regulations later this year.

Importantly, these new regulations will also be accompanied by new national standards for early years' services, against which services will be inspected and reported upon. The aim is that services will be supported to work towards higher quality standards, based on clearer criteria for measuring levels of compliance. The aim of this strengthened regulatory regime is to ensure that every child, in every service, can benefit from high quality early years provision. In addition to this work, the inspectorate of the Department of Education and Skills is, at the request of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, leading focussed inspections of the quality of educational provision in the free preschool year provided under the Early Childhood Care and Education Programme.

These education-focussed inspections aim to improve educational provision for preschool children, because as we all know, quality educational provision in the early years pays multiple dividends for children. These inspections are intended to have a developmental focus, examining how we can support the quality of children's learning experiences and achievements, whether that be how the service is managed, the curriculum and learning environment, through interactions between children and adults, and of course, by using play-based approaches to learning.

Early years practitioners will have an opportunity to engage in professional dialogue with inspectors who have expertise in early childhood education. This professional dialogue, together with the publication of reports, will, I hope, provide valuable advice to practitioners on how to improve the quality of learning experiences for the children. The Public Appointments Service will shortly begin the recruitment process for the early years inspectors, who are to be drawn from practitioners and experts in the early years sector. I welcome the fact that the Department of Education and Skills will soon begin an intensive consultation with the early years sector about these inspections.

The Department of Children and Youth Affairs and the Department of Education and Skills are very much committed to ensuring that these inspection systems work closely together and complement each other. We are conscious of the need to avoid unnecessary administrative burdens, while ensuring appropriate levels of transparency and accountability in everything we do and to minimise disruption to the valuable work early years services do.

As a step in this direction I have provided up to €350,000 to fund the development of an information and communications technology, ICT, infrastructure to support inspection work carried out by Tusla's early years inspectorate. This will be hosted on the same platform as the inspectorate of the Department of Education and Skills. I have also drawn these stakeholders together under one working group to strengthen collaboration and engagement. This improved system of regulation and inspection, while important, is just one part of a multifaceted agenda led by my Department to improve quality.

The early years quality agenda also includes workforce development and a range of quality supports. For example, and as part of the strengthened inspection regime, we are demanding higher quality through the introduction of a minimum qualification requirement for all early years practitioners. In the new regulations, all staff will be required to have a minimum level 5 qualification on the national qualifications framework in early years care and education, or an equivalent qualification. In addition, preschool leaders delivering the free preschool year will be required to have a minimum level 6 qualification, or equivalent, by September of this year. To support early years staff to meet these new qualification requirements, the Department of Children and Youth Affairs established a learner fund which allocated €3 million in 2014 and 2015 to almost 2,500 early years staff who have upskilled or are in the process of doing so. My colleague, the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy O'Sullivan, is working to improve the professional training system for early years practitioners while my Department is incentivising higher qualifications by specifically directing additional funding, through a higher rate of capitation, towards early years services that employ higher qualified staff benefiting more than 1,400 services in the school year 2013-14.

There are several other ways in which we are supporting providers in meeting the challenge of continually improving the quality and standards of early years services throughout the country. For example, we provide substantial capital funding, on an annual basis, to early years services. Indeed, I recently announced that €7 million of funding will be provided under the Early Years Capital Programme for 2015. The establishment of Better Start, the national early years quality support service which is fully funded by my Department, also demonstrates this Government's commitment to excellence in early years services. The aim of Better Start is to provide a nationally coherent continuum of support to providers to help them improve quality. It incorporates the work of city and county child care committees and the national voluntary childcare organisations, who receive annual funding of €13 million from my Department. This funding supports the valuable work of these bodies in supporting early years services around the country, through training, continuing professional development programmes, networking and cluster-type support groups. Critically, Better Start also incorporates the work of a new early years specialist service, which has recruited and trained 30 graduates in early childhood care and education to work directly with services in a mentoring capacity to improve quality, including assisting services in the implementation of the Síolta framework and the Aistear curriculum.

I mentioned earlier that my Department is considering ways to improve investment in early childhood care and education. This is largely being driven by the work of the interdepartmental group on future investment in early years and school-age care and education, which is being led by my Department. I established this group earlier this year to allow us develop a coherent, whole-of-government approach to future investment in early years and after-school care and education. Membership includes representation from across Government, including the Departments of Education and Skills, Health, Social Protection, Justice and Equality, and Jobs and Innovation as well as the Departments of Public Expenditure and Reform, Finance and the Taoiseach. The group is tasked with developing a series of options for future investment, and is required to report to Government by June of this year, next month.

To help the group develop the strongest set of options, its work is informed by research and evidence of best practice, as well as current policy commitments. I was also keen to ensure that we consult at an early stage on policy development with all relevant stakeholders. On 31 March, my Department hosted an open policy debate attended by some 40 invited representatives including parents, providers, academics, child care committees, and non-governmental organisations, NGOs. A range of views on future policy directions were expressed, and a range of options for future investment were examined and discussed.

Two separate online consultation processes, one with the early years sector and one with parents and guardians have also taken place and my Department is analysing approximately 400 submissions received from the early years sector and almost 1,000 submissions received from parents and guardians. Reports on these consultations are being compiled and will be published in due course.

While the focus of the work for this group is on all children, I have also asked it to consider children with special needs. Access to the free preschool year for children with special needs concerns many parents, and indeed it concerns me greatly as a parent. I have very personal experience of that. The Department of Children and Youth Affairs recognises this problem and several measures are already in place to ensure that the free preschool year is more accessible to these children. These include an exemption from the upper age limit where a child would benefit from starting primary school at a later age.In addition, children with special needs can apply to have the preschool year split over two years on a pro-ratabasis - for example, availing of the programme for two days a week in the first year and three days a week in the second year. The HSE, where possible, provides additional supports to children with special needs to enable them to avail of preschool services in mainstream preschool settings. Previous groups, chaired by the office of the Minister of State with responsibility for disability and the Department of Health, agreed that the best approach to meeting the needs of children with disabilities at preschool age was through mainstream preschool services, but no agreement was reached on what the model of provision would be or who would lead in developing this. The Secretary General of my Department has recently agreed with his counterparts in the Departments of Health and Education and Skills that my Department will seek to gain agreement, in a relatively short timeframe, between the three sectors - children, education and health - on the most appropriate workable model for supports to preschool children with special needs. This will be followed by close co-operation between the sectors in defining and developing the model and in making an agreed cross-departmental proposal for the resources required to implement it. It is my intention that a proposal will be available in time for the Estimates process.

There will be several challenges to agreeing an appropriate and workable model, including reviewing existing resources in the system to determine how they can best meet children's needs and accessing the additional investment needed. My Department has committed to leading this process, and, as I stated, we intend to have a proposal available in time for the Estimates process.