Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming in to respond to my Commencement matter which concerns the national childcare scheme. This scheme has a stated objective of improving children's outcomes, supporting lifelong learning, making work pay, reducing child poverty and tangibly reducing the cost of quality childcare for thousands of families throughout Ireland. They are very noble objectives and I know the Minister is very passionate about delivering on them. I thank him not just for coming in here today but for meeting me and early years childcare service providers from my constituency in Dublin Central.

Apart from supporting children and parents, the national childcare scheme is at its core a labour activation scheme. While that is an important objective as well, it is doing a disservice to some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children in our society and my constituency. I thank the Minister for meeting the Dublin City Community Co-op. This involved the Community After Schools project in Dublin 1, the Daughters of Charity St. Mary's Early Years Service in Dublin 1, Lourdes Youth and Community Services in Dublin 1, the North Wall Community Development Project in Dublin 1, and the Robert Emmet Community Development Project and the South Inner City Community Development Association from the south inner city. The Minister has given a lot of his time and has listened to them and commissioned a review of the national childcare scheme, which is very important.

However, those six services are already catering for approximately 300 young people and have a waiting list of more than 200. Estimates are that a minimum of 50% of the children attending those childcare services come from significantly disadvantaged backgrounds. The disadvantage can be multiple challenges. It can be everything from housing poverty to the extremes of housing homelessness to mental illness to physical illness to systemic intergenerational disadvantage. The Minister is passionate about breaking that cycle of disadvantage. I know he understands and values the potential power of changing people's lives that early childhood education can provide and that these childcare service providers are not providing a babysitting service. They are not even just providing an education service; it is a whole social infrastructure and social wrap-around service.

As the national childcare scheme applies to them, the funding model and accessing the funding is not equal for all children. There is an advantage in terms of the way the funding is distributed to the children of parents who are in employment because, at its core, it is a labour activation model. The Minister and I know the right supports during these early years can make life-determining outcome changes for these children. I commend the Minister on providing support through the employment wage subsidy scheme, EWSS, this year but we are looking at a cliff edge. We are looking at the end of the EWSS. Longer term, we need real sustainable funding. I believe we need a DEIS-type model for the early years sector and childcare services. We need to see it as part of the formal education system. I hope the Minister can provide the House with an update on how his work is progressing in this area.