Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am, however, a little disappointed, although I thank the Minister of State for taking this matter.

The capitalisation for the ECCE scheme needs to be significantly increased. The higher grant is €75 per week per child, but it still does not cover the cost of providing the service. Many services are facing closure as a result of the lack of funding. Parents have to send their child for three hours per day which is covered by the scheme. I understand that point, but the rate of inflation, together with the significant increase in rates, are a burden. All businesses pay rates and have overheads such as ESB and other bills. As such, this is becoming a major issue for providers. Providers are subsidising the scheme because of the poor pay rates and working conditions. Recently the Minister stated the budget for the affordable child care scheme this year was €466 million, yet there is non-contract time, for which the provider is not paid. However, last week for the first time since the scheme was introduced a small contribution was made. The provider has to download, print, process the paperwork for the scheme on behalf of the Department. Providers are doing the Department's work, but they are also helping parents, for which they receive no funding. This adds another cost for providers. This is a serious issue which needs to be addressed.

The biggest issue is that the period of payment for the provider is for 38 weeks, The provider is not paid at Halloween, Christmas, during mid-term breaks and the Easter and summer holiday periods, which means that they must go to the Labour Exchange and sign on for the dole. Because of this, they cannot get a mortgage. A number of people who work in this area are coming to me because they are not eligible for a mortgage because they are lucky to be coming out on average with €10 to €10.50 an hour. That is not right. If a child is booked in for five days and, for some reason, is missing, let me give as an example a child who misses four Fridays in a row through no fault of his or her own or that of his or her parents. The money is taken back from the provider who is at the loss of the money for the days missed. Who is to blame when a child is not present? The answer is nobody There is a need for balance, but it is not even looked at and the provider is punished where, through no fault of the service, a child is sick and the parent cannot him or her to the provider. These are issues that need to be addressed.

The information being given to providers and parents on the affordable child care scheme is constantly being changed, which is not good enough. As recently as yesterday morning, there was was another change announced. There is a major issue with the PIP programme which provides the implementation platform in registering the names of the children and inputting their details, based on which the provider receives payment . More often than not, the system crashes. It crashes constantly.It does not calculate the payments correctly and then one has to follow up with the Department to try to sort it out. These are the main issues, which need to be addressed. I was disappointed that a review was never carried out before this new scheme was announced. That is unacceptable. We kept getting announcement after announcement, but no review. I believe this programme's implementation platform, PIP, is now being looked at to try to sort out the payments, but the Minister says it could take up to 12 months. When we have that kind of money, it is unacceptable that is not happening.

On the non-contract hours and paperwork that was increased, when the Minister originally announced this, it was going through the parents. The parents were going to get all the paperwork and then they could decide what providers to go to. It has gone back to the provider again, so now the provider is doing the paperwork. It was announced on the website during the week that 173,000 pages were visited by people looking at the website. Of these, two thirds of the queries came from Dublin.