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

Great. That is why we have announced the €25 million for next year in terms of building blocks. That will be important. We are focusing that building blocks investment on services that will be offered to one- to three-year-olds, recognising the particular challenge at that end, even before we get into the ECCE side of things. That is where our big challenge is now.

When it comes to increasing capacity, a number of speakers spoke to the Child Care (Amendment) Bill, which we discussed in the Seanad just a couple of weeks ago. Bringing childminders within our wider infrastructure is important, in particular doing so in a way that supports the parents who choose to use childminders, allowing them benefit from the same cuts in fees that parents using centre-based childcare have experienced, but putting in place regulations that are appropriate. Just yesterday, there was a workshop between officials in my Department and childminders that Childminding Ireland had picked to go through the draft childminding regulations.

Co-location and the use of public buildings have come up a lot. Senators are probably all aware, and this speaks to recommendation 5, that the Minister, Deputy Foley, recently published new procedures on the use of school property and school sports facilities outside of school hours. That has strengthened the hand of schools to partner with childcare providers, particularly after-school ones. There is maybe an incentive there in that there is clarity that any income derived from that will not be taken away from the school and that the school will not be disadvantaged because of that. That is important.

As regards recommendation 1, as well as the planning guidelines, Senator Currie spoke about the technical guidance for local authorities and what they should ask of a developer when they are mandated to put in place a childcare service, that it is not a three-bedroom house that miraculously looks like all the other three-bedroom houses in the area. We have the universal design guidelines for early learning and childcare settings. They provide detailed technical information on the design of different types of settings and are drafted in such a way as to ensure inclusion for all. Training and resources are being developed by the Department in terms of their applicability to local authorities. They are not mandatory; they are guidelines. Maybe that is something we need to look at. We would hope that local authorities would take account of those in terms of the asks.

We are advancing the work on a State early learning and childcare agency. That will be important in providing greater structure in the area. There is a programme oversight board delivering that at the moment.

We have achieved a significant amount in this sphere over the past four years and, as a Government, we can be proud of what we have achieved. There continue to be very real challenges. Ireland started really investing in early years only in 2008 to 2009, when ECCE came in. That was our first real State investment in this area. Any comparison with other European countries has to bear that in mind. We are playing catch-up. When I came into office, our annual investment was €638 million per year. This year, it will be €1.1 billion, and that will grow in budget 2025. We have absolutely prioritised that investment. A couple of people talked about whether this should be in this Department or in the Department of Education. I do not know if that same prioritisation could have happened if it were within a wider Department. We should never be dogmatic as to how Departments work. The great team here in the Department is focused on early learning and care, on getting the very best for parents, childcare professionals and providers and, ultimately, on looking to benefit babies and children across our country.

I thank Senator Currie. This has been a very useful discussion. I hope I have been able to demonstrate how we are moving on many of these areas. I am happy to continue to engage with Senators. I will ask my officials to study Senator Currie's report closely to see if there are other pieces we can take from it in honing our approach going forward.