Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I move:

That Seanad Éireann: notes:

- that there is a serious shortage of early years care and education places across this country, particularly for children under the age of one;

- the enormous pressure that this shortage places on families and, in particular, on a mother’s return to the workplace and decisions about hours worked;

- that parents face a wait of two years for early years and childcare places in some urban centres, while one in four children in Dublin’s northeast inner city cannot currently access an Early Childhood Care and Education Programme (ECCE) place;

- that in some cases the waiting lists for places mean parents must put names down very early in pregnancy in order to try to secure a place for their future children;

- that the cost of childcare is having a real impact on family formation decisions for some families;

- that the introduction of core funding is a welcome step to lowering fees for parents and increasing wages for workers; however, there remain serious issues for many small ECCE providers within our communities;

- that Ireland has the second highest OECD household spend on childcare costs and while the Budget increase in the universal subsidy by 90 cent to €1.40 will reduce fees it falls far short of the supports that are needed;

agrees that:

- the root cause of some of these early years, childcare and ECCE shortages is attributable to a combination of factors with the lack of available and affordable TUSLA-compliant space to establish a crèche, pre-school or after school place, a major reason;

- the lack of Government and State agency intervention and supports to ensure the availability of sufficient pre-school places has contributed to the current crisis;

- public intervention is necessary to ensure that all children who wish to take up a pre-school or crèche place are afforded a space;

- the establishment of the employment regulation order for early years workers is a major breakthrough but must be recognised as the starting point in the improvement of wages and conditions in the sector;

- while there are commitments to supporting the children in the most disadvantaged families in early years setting, this need is urgent and that the lack of timely support has an impact;

- Ireland’s current childcare model, the shortage of places, and the cost on parents is contributing to gender inequality in the labour force;

- our State’s early year policy must be built on ensuring equality of access for all children, affordability for families, and fairness for professionals;

calls on the Government to:

- put specific emergency capital funding in place to ensure the availability of TUSLA-compliant space for the establishment of crèches, pre-school or after-school services;

- roll out in September 2023 publicly funded, community childcare facilities to address the shortage of places and ensure that we have a universal public model of childcare and early years education where children are able to access affordable childcare and education in a location within their communities;

- commit to reducing the cost of childcare for parents to €200 per month per child by 2024;

- commit to the continued improvement in the pay and conditions of early years workers on an annual basis;

- review and resolve the funding issues for early year providers currently only offering ECCE places;

- roll out Access and Inclusion Model (AIM) funding to all early years and after school facilities;

- roll out, with urgency, the recommendation by the Report of the Expert Group on Partnership for the Public Good (November 2021) to develop a new funding model for Early Learning and Care (ELC) and School-Age Childcare (SAC), for the identification and allocation of resources to ELC and SAC services with high levels of concentrated socio-disadvantage.

I thank the Minister of State for coming to the Chamber this evening. I understand the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, is scheduled to take the Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill 2022, which is going through the Dáil at the moment. I will start by saying that, since I was elected to the Seanad in 2020, I have been raising these issues in respect of the early years sector. It is important to acknowledge there has been substantial progress and major change, which must be welcomed. The principle of core funding and the pay agreements are major breakthroughs, and I know it is through the Minister's own commitment to the sector that we have seen these delivered. They are not without their difficulties. Many services that only provide early childhood care and education, ECCE, hours feel left behind. While €13 per hour does represent a pay increase for those working in the sector, it will not make paying the rent or having a decent standard of living any easier.

I am very glad we are joined in the House by early years workers and managers and parents from Dublin, Louth, Meath and Kilkenny. There is a very clear message that many of them want delivered. While there has been lots of good work done in the sector over the past two years, it is very important to communicate that very serious issues remain. These are issues that cannot be kicked down the road. They need to be resolved now.

The first is that there is a serious shortage of childcare and preschool places in the city of Dublin and in a number of parts of this country. I read the Government's amendment to our motion and not once does it acknowledge there are shortages. In fact, the Government claps itself on the back and says there have been increases in places. There may well be increases overall but let me tell the Minister of State about the reality, particularly here in Dublin and in the communities of the north inner city I happen to work with. Earlier this year, I told the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, about 55 preschool places being lost as a result of closures in Stoneybatter in Dublin's north-west inner city. Those places have not been replaced. In the north-east inner city, one in four children of preschool age cannot access a free preschool place. The reason we know this is because of the persistence and brilliant work of Young People at Risk, YPAR, a group of early years services and providers in the inner city that ensured research was commissioned into what was happening on the ground. The group hopes to publish this research in the weeks to come. This must be a wake-up call to us all. If we are serious about breaking the cycle of disadvantage, it is simply unacceptable that any child of preschool age could be deprived of a preschool place.

There is also a very significant shortage of places for the care of children under the age of one. Any parent of a small baby will say it is nearly impossible to get a place for a child under the age of one. I know this from my own experience, as will anybody else in the Chamber who is a parent. Parents are being told to put their children's names down while they are still pregnant. The few childcare services that still provide care for the under-ones say they are under enormous strain and are actively considering closing those services because it simply does not pay to keep them open.

We, as a State, cannot just sit back and hope supply will increase. We cannot just hope the national childcare scheme will ensure an increase in services over time. These needs must be met now. My colleagues in Labour Women have been speaking for many years about the need for a universal childcare scheme through which the State intervenes to ensure provision. Recommendation 25 of the Partnership for the Public Good report refers to the need to consider a public childcare system. We need to stop passing the buck regarding responsibility for the supply of childcare between the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, the Department of Education and the local authorities. We need the State to step up and intervene.

The second key issue we wish to raise is the cost of childcare. It remains exorbitant for far too many families. The pace of the fees reduction is simply not enough. The Government told us that parents would see a 25% reduction in childcare fees this January, and yet, when we do the sums on the reduction, it will not be 25%. It will be far less. In fact, one family with two earners and a four-year-old child told me just two days ago that they are going to see a 9% reduction in the new year. Any reduction is welcome, but the key issue is that this 9% is a far cry from the 25% that parents were told to expect by way of a reduction in fees come January. There are real implications to not seeing a dramatic reduction in fees.We know that fees and the lack of places are having a serious impact, especially on women's ability to stay in full-time employment and their decision either to stay in the workplace or to reduce their hours. My colleague, Senator Hoey, will talk more about this.

A third issue is the need to recognise that early years care and education is a vital tool in breaking the cycle of disadvantage in our communities. It is very important to say that, in some ways, the term "childcare" is a misnomer. Early years services are not just about minding children. They are a crucial resource in supporting families. In that context, I pay tribute to the great work of the services I have interacted with: the Community After Schools Project, CASPr; the After Schools Education and Support Programme, ASESP; Ozanam House; the Larkin Centre; Lourdes Youth and Community Services, LYCS; Daisy Days; and Urlingford Community Childcare. There are many other services, particularly those dealing with those aged six months to three years, that are providing care and showing commitment to children, especially children from disadvantaged families. They provide care and education out of fierce loyalty and love for the communities they are located in.We cannot talk about breaking the cycle and tackling disadvantage unless we look at where that begins, and that has to begin in the earliest years of the lives of children in those communities so that children who come from a chaotic background can get the support they need to do their homework and all of the other supports they need to prevent them from falling behind.

I am conscious the Dublin 7 aftercare service is present for this debate. It does great work in terms of ensuring children are not just minded but do not fall behind. Children with additional learning needs are waiting for therapy. The Minister of State knows only too well the waiting lists for therapy. Early years services and after-school supports are not just about minding children. Rather, they are an enormous family resource and are there to ensure children get some support for behavioural or other difficulties.

I appeal to the Minister of State, who is representing the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, in her capacity as Minister of State with responsibility for disabilities. A fantastic scheme has been rolled out across ten primary schools in the north-east inner city of Dublin over the past year. It involves a multidisciplinary team going into every primary school. The ethos and thinking behind the scheme is good because it catches children in primary school. As the Minister of State knows, even primary school can be too late. We need to try to catch children and identify problems at an earlier stage. Sometimes problems only come to light when children go to preschool. We need to roll out multidisciplinary team across services with concentrated levels of disadvantage. Waiting lists of between three or four years even to access a children's disability network team, CDNT, means we have to think differently about how we target communities with the greatest need.

In its amendment to the motion, the Government talks about setting up a targeting disadvantage fund. That all sounds great, but what is it? Where is it? We are in the middle of an appalling cost-of-living crisis. A measure like providing hot meals to all earlier services, in particular community services, would be relatively inexpensive. Yet, in budget 2023, there was no expansion of the pilot the currently exists. That needs to change.

That brings me to priority number four, namely, supporting children with a disability in the early years. We have a fantastic scheme, AIMS, for which funding is in place, but it is limited to the ECCE hours. Why do we think children with an additional need, be it behavioural, physical or intellectual, should not be supported for the hours beyond the ECCE scheme? I spoke to a family with twins the other day. One child has an additional need and the other does not. The child who does not is able to stay on for part-time or full-time care but the second child cannot because they are not able to access additional resources and support under AIMS for the hours beyond ECCE. That needs to change.

I am conscious I need to give time to my colleague Senator Hoey. We are not here just to talk about the problems; we are here to talk about how we can fix them. On the massive shortage, the State needs to intervene. Earlier this week I met the fantastic staff of the Lourdes Youth and Community Services, LYCS, on Hardwicke Street in Dublin. The service is in temporary accommodation owned by Dublin City Council. Over the door of the facility there is a lovely plaque to say the childcare facility was built with the benefit of EU Structural Funding and funding from the Irish Government. For good reason, Ireland is no longer in receipt of Structural Funding because we are in a truly remarkable situation in terms of our public finances. Yet, we are not building purpose-built childcare facilities as we did in the 1990s and prior to that.

I heard the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, refer to sustainability funding. We have seen appalling take-up of that funding. The fund is not fit for purpose. We need the State to build purpose-built preschool and crèche accommodation. For the past two years the after-school education and support programme in Dublin's North Wall has looked across the road at a perfectly good building owned by Dublin City Council. Every time we have raised the matter in the Dáil or Seanad, we have been told it is up to Dublin City Council to take responsibility. However, when we speak to Dublin City Council, we are told things cost money and other resources should be going in there. There is a lack of joined-up thinking.

We need to look at how the State can intervene, and we need to look at planning and the planning system. The reality is planning guidelines on the provision of childcare facilities within developments date back to 2001. That says a lot about our attitude towards planning for childcare. Many developments try to exempt themselves from providing such facilities because there is existing childcare provision in a locality or because the development comprises one or two-bedroom units. Just because people are living in a one-bedroom unit does not mean they will not have children. We need major reform of the planning guidelines and the State needs to build facilities.

I referred to Stoneybatter, where earlier this summer two facilities had to close because a primary school was forced to expand its additional needs provision, which was wonderful but meant that two preschool services had to close. They always knew they were on a licence and had very little time, but they had to close with very little notice. The reality is there was no joined-up thinking from the Department of Education and the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth when it came to the education of preschool kids. The Department of Education did not think about the loss of those 55 places.

I am conscious the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, has done great work, but there are serious and urgent issues. This is not rocket science. The issues can be resolved. There is money. We just need to ensure we put it towards building purpose-built childcare facilities because the NCS cannot do all that work if there is no supply of services.