Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator for raising this issue, which my Department is monitoring on an ongoing basis and through formal reviews. The level of pay in the sector does not reflect the value of the work that early learning and care and school-age childcare practitioners do for children, families, society and our economy. I am doing all that is in my power to address this issue.

However, as the Senator knows, my Department is not the employer, it does not set wage rates and it does not determine working conditions for staff working in the sector. That said, my Department has, over a number of years, provided a range of supports to service providers to enable them to improve wages and working conditions. These include a year-on-year increase in State funding, higher capitation payment rates for graduates working in the sector and support for school-age childcare to make it easier for providers to offer full-time and full-year employment contracts. The most recent published data from Pobal indicate that the average hourly wage in the sector was €12.45 in 2020, which was 4% higher than in the previous year. However, I am also aware that there is considerable variation in wages in the sector, and approximately 56% of early learning and care practitioners earned less than €12.30 per hour in 2020. As we know and as the Senator referenced, many such practitioners work part-time or on temporary contracts.

In order to see how we can address this, last December, working in conjunction with SIPTU and Childhood Services Ireland, which is an IBEC trade association, I began a short process in which interested parties were invited to discuss how best to address pay and conditions in the sector and how a JLC might support this. I appointed Dr. Kevin Duffy, former chair of the Labour Court, to be the independent chair of this process. Dr. Duffy made a clear recommendation that the JLC was the way forward. On foot of Dr. Duffy's report, I wrote to the Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy English, recommending the establishment of a JLC. At the end of June, the Minister of State, Deputy English, signed the establishment order for a JLC for the early years sector. I see that as a significant and welcome development. That move has been welcomed by both employers and the trade unions in the sector. In addition to the JLC process, and following two years of in-depth work, an expert group is due to report this November with recommendations for a new funding model which will structure investment to deliver on the objectives of affordability, quality, inclusion and sustainability. The expert group's recommendations may offer new avenues through which the State can support service providers to improve pay and to meet the requirements of any future employment regulation order that may arise from the JLC, as well as addressing the issue of parental fees, which the Deputy focused on.

We discussed the question of sick pay last year. The best approach is the one the Government is taking in terms of a worker-wide approach to the issue of sick pay. As the Senator knows, on 9 June this year the Tánaiste announced details of the Government's plan to introduce legislation to give all workers the right to paid sick leave.It is to start next year with three days, and this is to increase to five days in 2023 and seven in 2024. That is a positive step for this sector, but also for all workers.

Childcare is a priority for me in my engagement on the budget this year. My officials and I were engaging very significantly with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform on this particular issue. Obviously, as the Senator knows, I cannot tell him the outcomes of my engagements here today but the priority is a key one for me. I have met the Big Start coalition. I have had significant engagement with SIPTU on this issue, which I believe it would recognise, but all of this is subject to a budgetary process of which we are still very much in the middle.