Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his work to date. This is a tricky sector. I have started a preschool, a school, after-school programmes and parent and toddler groups so I have experience of the challenges, costs and difficulties that parents face. The Minister has probably been the most successful to date in grasping the nettle and addressing the situation. It has been very difficult with the cost-of-living increases. The are some important highlights I want to talk about.

The number of services that closed in 2021 was lower than in previous years. The number of staff in the sector held steady. The additional costs of operating during Covid-19 were not passed on to parents through increased fees, meeting an important and shared objective of the State and providers. I have always said that we have it all wrong. We pay the lecturers the most and the childcare workers the least. It is in the first few years of life that people are the most impressionable. We really need to value childcare workers more.

I welcome the core funding. It is additional funding for ECCE standard capitation. The ECCE has been of huge benefit to parents as their children prepare to go to school. Having two years of preschool is hugely beneficial. The total fund is €221 million. The Minister secured €78 million additional funding in last year's budget. This is brilliant because it is what we need. Of the €221 million in the new core funding the Minister has secured, €138 million is to support staffing costs and improve pay and conditions. The Minister witnessed the gratitude the head of the crèche in Inagh had for him on the day he came to visit the brilliant childcare services there. She was grateful to the Minister and it was so nice for a Minister to get appreciation. She is very apolitical and a great childcare operator. She was genuinely grateful for the work the Minister has done in helping her with staffing costs. It is very hard for staff to be motivated if they are not paid and valued properly. I have to hand it to the Minister. He has done great work. I have also been to other childcare providers who are very grateful for the work the Minister has done on this.

There is also €25 million to support administration. This is a huge issue. Many childcare providers have said they and their staff end up spending so much time dealing with administration rather than with the children. The funding of €25 million to solve this is very important. Childcare workers want to spend their time with the children and not filling out forms and being up to their necks in administration. It is excellent that the Minister has dealt with this. There is €20 million to reflect increases in non-staff overheads. Everything costs more money these days. I thank the Minister for looking at overheads and recognising this. He has put money where his mouth is. There is €38 million to support the employment of graduates. This is important. We have had instances where people with a master's degree in childcare are on the minimum wage. The Minister finds this appalling and has worked hard to try to rectify the issue.

This is a new way to allocate funding in the sector. It is a good model. A lot of research has been done. The Minister commissioned two seminal reports. The first, Partnership for the Public Good: A New Funding Model for Early Learning and Care and School-Age Childcare, was done independently. It was not done by the Minister, civil servants or a political party but independently to find a new funding model, which the Minister has taken on board. The second is Nurturing Skills: The Workforce Plan for Early Learning and Care and School-Age Childcare. I thank the Minister for his commitment to the sector. It is very important that we value our children from a very young age. Lecturers get paid to work with those aged over 18 but we have to look at the value we place on our childcare workers. They really are our heroes. They become another parent to very young children. Young children are impressionable and it is important that we value our childcare workers.

There is another issue I want to raise, which is not of the Minister's doing. It is the school programme for children with special needs. The funding has been put in place but many schools rely on their teachers for the summer programme. Many teachers need their holidays. Even though the money and venues are there, schools are struggling to find staff to run the summer programme for parents of children with special needs. They need it the most. We have to look at this and see who else we can get in and what staff we can access. If teachers have had a long hard year and need their holidays, we cannot make them stay for all of July. We have to find a new way around this. I have been approached by many people with children with autism. Funding is not the issue; it is the staff. The Minister and the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, will have to address this.