Seanad debates

Wednesday, 5 July 2017

Commencement Matters

Early Childhood Care and Education Staff

10:40 am

Photo of Jim DalyJim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

On behalf of the Minister, Deputy Zappone, I thank Senator Gavan for raising this important issue today, as it touches on a key area of consideration for the early years sector. Practitioners in the early years care and education sector play a critical role in delivering high-quality services for children and families and they deserve to be recognised, valued and respected for this. It is proven by the European Commission and others that for children to receive high-quality services, certain factors must be present. For example, a good curriculum and a good monitoring and inspection regime are essential but so too is a valued and respected workforce that is appropriately remunerated.

It is acknowledged that pay and conditions are major issues being experienced by the child care sector in Ireland at present and that these conditions lead to difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff. Alongside addressing affordability for parents, this needs to be addressed. There have been calls for a nationally agreed pay scale for the child care workforce. The State is not the employer and we must leave the negotiation of a pay scale to the Workplace Relations Commission, the Labour Court and the sector itself, both employers and employees.

An obvious mechanism to be considered is a sectoral employment order, SEO. Under an SEO process, organisations substantially representative of employers and employees come together to agree a way forward and submissions are sought from key stakeholders. As a significant funder, and with policy responsibility for quality, the Department of Children and Youth Affairs would be well placed to make a submission to this process. The Minister, Deputy Zappone, is aware that the trade unions are active in seeking to achieve a critical mass of representation on the employees' side to pursue an SEO.The Minister welcomes discussions in the sector to identify an organisation substantially representative of employers.

The Government continues to invest in the early years sector. Budget 2017 saw a 35% increase in child care funding, which was on top of a similar increase in the 2016 budget. These increases reflect the emphasis being placed on developing a quality service with appropriately supported staff. To go some way towards addressing cost pressures faced by providers in the sector, €14.5 million was secured in 2017 to enable providers to be paid for non-contact time. For the average early childhood care and education, ECCE, service with 25 children, this will mean an additional payment of approximately €2,400 per annum. The Minister, Deputy Zappone, is pleased to inform the Senator that this payment will be issuing over the coming weeks. Only recently the Minister announced 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 participating in the community child care subvention and the training and employment child care programmes. All services signed up to deliver these schemes from September will be invited to apply.

The programme for Government also commits to carrying out an independent review of the cost of providing quality child care. This commitment aligns closely with work on the design and development of a new single affordable child care scheme, and the Minister and her officials are progressing this work in that context. The review will feed into future policy development, including with regard to levels of payments to services. In conclusion, the Department of Children and Youth Affairs is grateful to the child care sector for the way in which it has engaged with the Department to seek to address quality, access and affordability issues. The attendance of child care providers and practitioners at recent information events around the country, their representation on the early years forum which the Minister established last year and their work on various working groups are greatly appreciated and are assisting in finding solutions to the many challenges. The Minister, Deputy Zappone, also wishes to acknowledge that while important first steps have been taken to seek to address key challenges for the child care sector, much work remains to be done. The Minister is committed to working with her colleagues in the Government to deliver on the many commitments in the programme for a partnership Government.

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