Jillian van Turnhout (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is very welcome, and I welcome the opportunity to have a little influence on his thoughts as we approach the budget. I note the Minister's ongoing openness and engagement with individual Senators and with the House. As the Minister said, it is a time for political choices and options, and this is what we are trying to influence. I will focus on specific issues regarding children. I am delighted to say that my colleague Senator Mary Ann O'Brien will focus on issues of carers and respite, and I support everything she will say on it.

I am concerned about the talk of a €5 increase in child benefit mooted by the Tánaiste. Thinking in terms of political choices, an increase of €5 in child benefit will not be the answer. This morning, I heard Teresa Heeney of Early Childhood Ireland saying a family in crisis needs much more than €5 - they need €55 or €105 - while a family that is not in crisis will probably not notice it. However, if we were to put the money together to ensure we got value for money and focus on improving outcomes for children, we could show how we have changed our thinking and methods. Families that are under considerable financial strain want to know that services exist, that they have a right to them, that they are available and that they are of high quality.

We need to invest in child care services. A few months ago, Early Childhood Ireland released a report. I am chairman of Early Childhood Ireland, and it is a governance role.I support the recommendations contained in the report, Footsteps for the Future, which was authored by Dr. Stephen Kinsella. He took the 2015 spring statement forecast and the CSO's demographic projections to 2021 as his basic data. In the report, he discussed the costs and benefits of several medium-term current and capital spending plans. The headline statement in that report is that we need to move gradually towards having one year of paid parental leave, adding one month every year for six years. We can take a step in the right direction in this regard. That is why the report is called, Footsteps for the Future. Its recommendations are in line with international best practice in terms of what is good for babies in their first year, that is, to be at home with either of their parents.

We need a structured approach to considering funding of out-of-school and afterschool care. New Zealand has a good model called out of school care and recreation, OSCAR, in which the household and the state share in the payment of approved operators. This is outlined in the report. I am concerned about afterschool funding, in that we do not have guidance and structures. Like the child care sector, this may grow into a model that is not the best place from which to start. We have an opportunity now to structure afterschool care.

We must consider increasing capitation levels to child care providers. Those I have met around the country are struggling and closing. Often, people discuss whether someone is a private or community-based provider, but that is a false dichotomy. The only difference is in the payment of rates. They are struggling with the same issues. Of the 25,000 child care workers, 3,370 - almost 14% - needed to sign on to the live register, costing the State €7.2 million. Surely, there is a better way. They are professionals and we are asking them to have qualifications, yet we ask them to sign on every year because the free preschool year only lasts 39 weeks. Could we extend that year so as to keep these people employed in providing child care instead of stigmatising them and forcing them to sit at home because they are not valuable enough to keep them on?

We need a rights-based approach to children with additional needs and those from disadvantaged areas and to consider a model of anticipatory funding. We know the demographics concerning children with special or additional needs or from disadvantaged areas. Dr. Kinsella estimated that it would cost €16 million per annum to front-load a system that ensured a framework based on prevalence and demographics. There should also be just one inspectorate for early years education. Currently, the State is funding several. A cost to the State, it is equally a burden on the child care providers when different inspectors land on their doorsteps. We are funding public health nurses up to assistant director level to inspect child care services. It makes no sense. Public health nurses are wonderful people, but they are not qualified to inspect child care settings. In fairness, the Department of Education and Skills has been doing a great deal of work in this regard recently. Perhaps it should be the lead and we should have just one inspectorate.

I am the chair of a new cross-party group on children's future health. I have serious concerns in this regard, particularly about obesity and child poverty. The Comptroller and Auditor General raised the issue of the school meals programme in his report yesterday, in that some schools have inflated numbers. I welcome his call for a re-examination of the programme. One applies to the Department of Social Protection for funding, yet the Departments of Education and Skills, Children and Youth Affairs, Health and Agriculture, Food and the Marine handle the other aspects. We should determine how to co-ordinate all of that. Healthy Food for All has asked for an additional budget to be allocated for the school meals section to co-ordinate a forum of the various Departments so that they might interact with schools in just one way on the programme's delivery. This work should be led by the Department of Education and Skills, given the potential for the stigmatisation of children and young children who avail of the scheme. Yesterday, we received a briefing from the Irish Heart Foundation and Healthy Food for All. They referred to a principal. The scheme is available to a certain number of children in the cohort in question. In order to make it inclusive, the principal used it as a prize for the other students so that two per week were lucky enough to participate with the other children. This reminded me of my uncle telling me of how he had always believed that we had relations in Canada because his family used to get the Christmas parcel. His mother made sure that they did not know that it was coming from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. The way we structure schemes sometimes places a burden on children.

I have written to the Minister for Finance regarding a further issue, namely, the need to implement a sugar-sweetened drinks tax in the budget. This would help to tackle the problem of obesity by reducing consumption and generating income for reinvesting in children's health initiatives while assisting the Department of Finance in meeting its fiscal goals. This will require political will around the Cabinet table, but I have provided the Minister with a great deal of evidence.

With the Minister, Deputy Howlin, examine the scheme to support national organisations? A core grant, it is pushed from one year to the next and has never been structured properly by the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. This Government inherited it and it stems from different machinations, but no one has ever tackled the issue of having just one source of funding for NGOs. They should declare that they get no other State funding. I have no difficulty in that regard, but we do not have a way of supporting core organisations in their work. I would support any funding that we could give to the Child and Family Agency, Tusla, which was burdened with a legacy debt that it cannot carry through.

As to community supports for early discharges, the Irish Heart Foundation and the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland produced an excellent report and costed the supports. I presented that information to the Minister for Health. The model is there for us to follow.