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

I warmly thank Senators for their words of support for the Bill. It is great that they support it, although it does not surprise me. At the same time, it is important for me to receive their encouragement in respect of the Bill and my ongoing work on childcare and early years education and care. I genuinely mean that.

I found the contributions of Senators thoughtful and their excellent questions spurred me into thinking further about certain issues. In answering some of their questions, I will use the opportunity to speak briefly on our current thinking on some of the issues, which my officials and I may not articulate as much as we may like, including perhaps in the Dáil. I will also answer some of the specific questions raised. That is meant as a compliment to Senators whom I thank for preparing such excellent contributions to the debate.

All the contributions noted the significant progress we have made on the journey to date. I appreciate those comments. Statements to the effect that we have a long way to go are also helpful to me and this is a view shared by me and my excellent officials, some of whom are present. It is important that parliamentarians in both Houses offer constructive criticism as it will support our efforts to secure increased investment.

Senators will be aware that the affordable childcare scheme will not be the only vehicle on this journey. The scheme will replace a number of other schemes and result in the streamlining of financial supports. I am especially excited that it will offer a way to wrap around the early childhood care and education, ECCE, free preschool programme, our largest early years scheme as measured by funding and number of participants. While the Bill has been designed to support quality-raising measures, the quality of childcare will also be addressed through other measures, including training, the inspection regime and efforts to improve wages and working conditions in the childcare sector.

I appreciate Senators' comments, specifically regarding the amendments that were proposed and accepted in the Dáil. As Senator Kelleher noted, it is not just good policy that is important but also policy that is informed by practice. The Senator was able to speak from the perspective of her professional background. Some of our colleagues in the Dáil were also able to use their professional background when offering recommendations on amendments. We also heard from other sources, including advocates. Senators referred, for example, to organisations such as One Family, the Children's Rights Alliance and Early Childhood Ireland which work hard advocating from a perspective of expertise as well as the experience of their members. All of that is good.

I will now address some specific questions, not necessarily in the order in which they were raised. I am grateful for the support expressed by Senator Clifford-Lee on behalf of the Fianna Fáil Party. I also note the Senator's focus on women. She raised the issue of additional supports for workers and asked a question on rural areas. I am keenly aware that the professionals who work as childminders are critical because many of them have told me that in some areas, particularly in rural settings, centre-based childcare is not available and parents must, therefore, use childminders. For this reason, it is important that we implement as quickly as possible the initial actions and recommendations of the working group. As the Senator is aware, I have increased the number of family resource centres and provided a slight increase in support for existing centres. While there are not as many family resource centres as I would like, some are located in rural areas and provide a base for childcare centres.

I will address the questions many Senators asked on the budget presently. Senator Kelleher focused on children living in more vulnerable contexts and those who are experiencing difficulties or harm regarding some aspects of their identity and background. I am aware of this issue and have already tried to address it. Section 14, for example, enables us to identify certain categories of children and their sponsors who can access free childcare for such children on the basis of agreement between me and the providers in question. This will also mitigate or reduce harm in the context of children in emergency accommodation and even reduce the harm of poverty. I am trying to get access to free childcare for families in emergency accommodation, even in circumstances where they move from their original place of residence. My vision for the childcare scheme is to ensure it focuses on families who have less.

The Senator also asked a question on the OECD review carried out in 2004. She is correct that Ireland lags far behind other countries in this area. It would be good to use the review as a checklist.

The access and inclusion model, AIM, takes a wider approach in developing a charter addressing what it means to be inclusive and setting out how we operate in that context.The Department is sponsoring an incredible amount of training of professionals in order to ensure that they operate as inclusive childcare providers and that will potentially have an impact on Traveller children. We could look at that a bit more. The Senator mentioned Sure Start. Naomi Eisenstadt had a lot to do with establishing that. She will be coming here as my guest in early May. I am having her meet a number of people for them to glean from her wisdom.

There were a couple of other questions. On maintenance, all means-tested schemes run by the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection include maintenance payments. As they include child maintenance within the income assessment, this scheme is no different in that regard. Including maintenance payments within the income assessment is essential to the principle of treating all income in the same way regardless of the source and the principles of equity and fairness in the treatment of all applicants. Another question was raised in respect of separated parents. Each parent is an applicant in his or her own right and enjoys the full benefit of the thresholds when being assessed for a subsidy. That clearly answers the question. Each qualifies for a subsidy in his or her own right for the days and hours for which he or she cares for the child. Where a separated parent is paying maintenance, that would be acknowledged and deducted when calculating assessable income. The needs of lone parents have been explicitly taken into account from the outset in the design of the scheme.

On Senator Clifford-Lee's concerns regarding professionalisation of the early years workforce and its low wages, of course those issues are of great concern to me. On the specific requirements of professionalisation, I will mention something which I announced at the weekend when I was with the membership of Early Childhood Ireland. On Saturday I announced our new support for continuing professional development. We are now going to establish a systematic approach and a structure for the support and formation of an ongoing continuing professional development programme for workers. We will be employing a person to do that. For the first time we will provide some training for professionals that will be paid for. It will be brought to the professionals themselves or the centres from which they come will receive money to support them in replacing staff while they are receiving training. That is another step forward in terms of supporting the professionals.

There are two other things I wanted to mention. The first has to do with the money. I will reply to some of the comments of Senator Warfield and his colleagues in Sinn Féin, who are very clear in the way they articulate a focus on the model of investment which we have in Ireland and on a public model. Obviously we have a mixed model in the country. Here is the question on which my officials and myself have been really focused in recent days and on which we will be focused in the upcoming weeks as we work on the early years strategy. How do we get public moneys to the practitioner and the professional? That starts to address the question of the focus on the public but also on the professionals and the practitioners. How do we get the public moneys to the professional? We are going to be doing a more intensive examination of a couple of other jurisdictions to help us answer that, perhaps in a different way than we have in the past.

On the budget itself, the goal I have and the point about increasing the percentage of GDP invested in the area, of course I will be focused on those issues. The question is how to approach the matter strategically and in a way that will get significant investment. Again, this is something that is happening in the context of our discussions on the early years strategy. As we develop a draft, we will put it out for a big open policy debate and hear what people have to say on it. I note the headlines today about some of the conversations we have had in Cabinet recently, in which our Minister for Finance said there potentially could be a big pot there and that a lot of the focus will be on housing, health, education and capital spend. That list did not include childcare. That is not to say that childcare is outside of that focus or that it will not be emphasised but I am noting that and I know the Minister knows this.

I understand the strategy of focusing on capital spend and so on as we move towards a more prosperous economy, because capital spend is a once-off which does not result in a fuelling or heating-up of the economy in the same way as does investment in ongoing expenditure. In light of my concerns about significantly increasing the investment in childcare beyond the €20 million which we got this year - because, as Senator Noone pointed out, that will not be sufficient for 2019 - I will be asking the Minister for Finance whether there is some way to spend more. Are there certain strands of spending in which increases do not necessarily fuel the economy in the same way as would increases in other spending strands? Are there some strands of spending in which an increase may contribute to further fuelling of the economy but in which there is a greater justification for such an increase because of all we know about the state of the childcare sector as it stands? These are not comments coming from my officials or my Department. I am asking these questions myself as a politician but I am engaging with my Department in that regard.

Reducing the gender pay gap, which was mentioned by Senators Clifford-Lee and Noone, can be achieved by paying professionals in the childcare sector more. Most of them are women. That is a way to develop in terms of that issue. If many of our childcare professionals are not making a living wage, a fact pointed out by Senator Warfield and of which I am aware, then if moneys going into that sector are increased and more is given to the people earning that money in low-income households, does it not necessarily mean that the income of the household will be raised, thereby impacting on child poverty in a different way than through subsidies for childcare? I am just sharing a couple of the thoughts I have been having recently in order to begin building my arguments with the Minister for Finance. I understand the dialogue and the thinking being developed by the Government in respect of the upcoming budget. I am thinking about where I sit as the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs and about my absolute and passionate commitment to look for a considerably more significant investment that we have had in the past. I want to be able to indicate that ambition in the context of the next ten years and the early years strategy.