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

The purpose of this Bill is to ensure that Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, has the appropriate enforcement powers to address serious non-compliance with regulations for early years services and that parents have access to information on the quality of those services. The intention is not to increase enforcement action, but to make it more effective, address some of the limitations of the current legislation and thereby improve overall compliance within the sector. The Bill will also remove the current exemption from regulation of self-employed childminders who work in the childminder’s home. The removal of this exemption will allow me, following enactment, to introduce childminding-specific regulations.

The opening up of regulation to childminders will make possible their participation in the national childcare scheme, NCS, which is the subsidy the State currently uses to reduce the cost of centre-based childcare for parents. It has done a lot by reducing costs by 25 % last year and will reduce them by 25 % in September this year. We want to ensure that parents who use childminders are also able to avail of those cost savings. I am committed to ensuring that childminding-specific regulations, when they are introduced following enactment of this legislation, will be proportionate and appropriate to the home and family setting in which childminders work.

Concerns have been raised about the extent of the consultations my Department has undertaken on the draft childminding regulations. It is important that I reaffirm both the scale of consultation to date and my commitment to ongoing consultation and engagement with childminders in the drafting of the regulations. My Department has just concluded a 12-week consultation on the draft regulations, which ran from February to May of this year. This consultation had more than 1,000 inputs from childminders, parents and other stakeholders. The report on the consultation is being prepared at the moment and will be published once finalised. In addition, in developing this Bill, the Department undertook public consultation from March to October 2022 on policy proposals contained within the general scheme of the Bill. I understand that there is anxiety about scale among childminders. A change is coming to the sector. However, I want to make it clear that the draft regulations on which there has been public consultation are a draft. There will be changes on foot of the public consultation.I had a good engagement with Childminding Ireland last week and we are doing further workshopping on the regulations on foot of that to make sure they are appropriate to the settings of childminders.

I will turn to the provisions of this Bill. Section 1 defines the Child Care Act 1991 as the principal Act.

Sections 2 and 3 move the definition of "personal data" to ensure the definition applies also to Part 7A of the principal Act.

Section 4 amends section 58A to define new terms introduced in this Bill, including a definition of "childminding service". The section also amends the definition of "early years service" to include the childminding service.

Section 5 amends section 58B to empower the Minister to make regulations to ensure registered providers of early years services, persons in charge of services and persons involved in management are fit and proper persons to carry out those functions. This section also provides that the Minister may make regulations requiring early years services to share information on certain enforcement actions with parents and to share personal data of parents with the Child and Family Agency, where necessary and proportionate.

Section 6 makes a technical amendment to section 58C.

Section 7 amends section 58D to require the agency to correct the register where it finds an error and to take into consideration enforcement action taken against a registered provider or a relevant person when making a decision on registration. This section also provides the agency with discretion in registering decisions, including considering past convictions of early years service providers.

Section 8 inserts a new section 58DA that requires the agency to publish information on enforcement actions against early years services where to do so is in the children's interests.

Section 9 amends section 58F to provide for appeals against a temporary prohibition order, which is a new enforcement power introduced by this Bill.

Section 10 amends section 58J by the insertion of new subsections relating to the validity of the warrant and the inspection of documents and records by Tusla's early years inspectorate. The measure includes allowing for more than one entry to a premises over a 38-day period under a warrant.

Sections 11 and 12 put onto a legislative footing certain steps on the enforcement pathway that are currently administrative steps, these being improvement notices where an authorised person requires a provider to address an issue of significant concern that, if it persists, is likely to pose harm to a child, and immediate action notices where an authorised person requires a provider to address an issue that poses an immediate risk of harm to a child. In both cases, if the provider does not comply with the notices, sections 11 and 12 provide for Tusla to apply to the District Court for an order to comply with the notices, either an improvement order or an immediate action order.

Section 13 inserts a new section 58JC to enable an authorised person who is of the opinion that there is an immediate and grave risk to the health, safety or welfare of a child attending a service to issue a temporary prohibition order preventing the service from operating for a specific period of up to six weeks, extendable to 12 weeks if the matter has not been remedied.

Section 14 inserts a new section 58JD that enables the agency to apply to the District Court for a closure order against a service in certain situations, including where a temporary prohibition order was in place and the service is carried out in contravention of the order, where the matters specified in the temporary prohibition order are not remedied before the expiration of the order and where the agency has reason to believe that a person is providing a prescribed early years service where they are not registered to do so.

Section 15 inserts a new section 58JE that allows a registered provider or relevant person to appeal to the Circuit Court a decision of a District Court to grant a closure order within seven days of the granting of the closure order. The section also stipulates that the bringing of an appeal against a closure order does not have the effect of suspending the operation of a closure order.

Section 16 amends section 58K to extend the actions for which a person is guilty of an offence to include failure to comply with an improvement order, an immediate action order, a temporary prohibition order or a closure order. A person who impedes or obstructs an authorised person during the course of an inspection under section 58J was already guilty of an offence and this section also ensures this provision extends to all the agency's power of inspection.

Section 17 amends section 58L of the principal Act by enabling a person who cares for children other than their own children to register with Tusla if they provide an early years service, including a childminding service. It will remain the case, however, that a person who only cares for relatives is not required to register with Tusla.

Section 18 inserts a new section 58M that provides for transitional arrangements that will apply to childminders over a three-year period following the repeal set out in section 22. The amendments allow for the exemptions repealed by section 22 of this Bill to continue to apply to any person to whom they applied prior to the repeal of the exemptions. This transitional arrangement will also apply to any person who commences as a childminder during the transition period once they meet the previous conditions of the exemption.

Section 19 amends Schedule 1 of the National Vetting Bureau (Children and Vulnerable Persons) Act 2012 by substituting "an early years service" for "a pre-school service" to ensure that, for the purposes of Garda vetting, the definition of "relevant work or activities" encompasses childminding services and school-age childcare services and not just preschool services.

Section 20 amends Schedule 2 of the Children First Act 2015 by the substitution of "an early years service" for "a pre-school service" to ensure the definition of "mandated persons" includes not just a person working in preschool services but also childminders and persons working in school-age childcare.

Section 21 amends the Childcare Support Act 2018. It amends the definition of "childcare service" to refer to the amended definition of "early years service" in this Bill to ensure childminders are able to take part in the national childcare scheme, NCS. The section also amends Schedule 2 agreements with certain statutory bodies by the addition of the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science as a statutory body who can enter into an agreement under section 14 of the 2018 Act for the provision of supports for vulnerable children.

Section 22 repeals section 58L(b) and (c) of the principal Act, thus, once the Act is commenced, bringing childminders who work in the childminders' homes into the scope of regulation, subject to the transitional arrangements in section 18.

Section 23 is a standard provision that provides for the Short Title and collective citation and allows for the commencement of different provisions of the Bill.

As I said, this Bill has two key purposes. One is to update Tusla's enforcement powers across all areas and the other is specifically for childminders as the Bill takes out that exemption and allows for the creation of regulation. We look forward to the wide scale registration of childminders and to allowing the parents who use their services to draw down from the NCS. I commend the Bill to the House.