Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Mulherin for raising this important issue and giving the House a valuable opportunity to reflect on this matter, which is the subject of debate in the early years sector and touches on some of the key policy considerations that are driving the reforms being progressed by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs. The Senator has already mentioned some of the ways in which the Government is investing in the early years sector. As she indicated, the 35% increase I achieved in budget 2017 was on top of a similar increase in 2016. Such increases reflect the emphasis being placed on developing a quality service with appropriately supported staff. As a means of addressing the cost pressures being faced by providers in the sector, I secured €14.5 million for 2017 to enable providers to be paid for non-contact time. For an average early childhood care and education service with 25 children, this will mean an additional payment of approximately €2,400 per annum. I announced yesterday that an extra €3.5 million will be made available to child care providers in the form of a non-contact time payment. This will benefit child care providers who participate in the community child care subvention and training and employment child care programmes. All services that sign up to deliver these schemes from September will be invited to apply.

In the slightly longer term, the programme for Government commits to an independent review of the cost of providing quality child care services. When this review has been completed, it will feed into future policy development and into the design of the new affordable child care scheme, including payment levels to services. A new national scheme of financial support for parents towards the cost of their child care, to be known as the affordable child care scheme, will eventually replace the existing targeted child care subsidisation schemes with a single, streamlined and more user-friendly scheme. The affordable child care scheme will encompass universal and targeted elements which can be incrementally expanded over time. It is designed to be flexible, with the ability to adjust income thresholds, subsidy rates and income taper rates over time as further Government investment becomes available. In advance of the introduction of the new affordable child care scheme, changes are being made to the existing schemes to improve subsidy rates. From September 2017, up to 33,000 children aged between six months and 36 months who are availing of registered child care will benefit from a new universal child care subsidy. The maximum weekly subsidy payable will be €20 for children attending full-time care. Moreover, from September up to 23,000 children and their families who currently avail of child care support under the community childcare subvention, CCS, programme will benefit from significant increases of up to 50% in the subvention rates provided under the programme. Up to 7,000 children and their families currently availing of the training and education child care support programmes will also see increases in subsidy rates. Up to an additional 7,000 children are expected to benefit from the CCS scheme for the first time from September 2017 due to improved access to the scheme.

Capital funding is in place to support the sector. Funding of €4 million was made available under the early years capital programme for 2017, with a separate €3 million allocated for services providing school age child care. Applications for these schemes are being assessed currently.

Notwithstanding these improvements in the area of affordability and the significant additional resources that have been secured for early years, it is recognised that the sustainability of services remains an issue. A fund of €1 million has been made available to child care services to help replace unqualified community employment scheme workers. Further, officials from my Department have met several providers to understand better the sustainability challenges they face. The learning from these interactions is informing policy in this area, especially as it relates to the annual Estimates process and the decisions around resource allocation.

Staff in the child care sector play a critical role in delivering high-quality child care services, and they deserve to be recognised, valued and respected for this. It is acknowledged, however, that pay and conditions are major issues facing the sector and can lead to difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff. My Department is engaging with colleagues in relevant Departments and with the early years sector to explore how this might be addressed in the short, medium and long term. While my Department is somewhat constrained in what it can do in this regard as it is not an employer of child care workers, it accepts that it is a major funder of the child care sector and, as such, has a role to play.

I wish to acknowledge the good work going on in partnership throughout the early years sector to bring about improvements in all the areas we are discussing today. While much has been achieved to date, much work remains to be done to ensure Ireland achieves its aim of being a model of early years delivery.