Pauline Tully (Sinn Fein)

I am sharing time my Senator Ryan. Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire. I thank her for making sure she was here. I know we delayed it for a week so that she could. I appreciate that she is here for the motion. It is a short motion with a number of asks. I want to deal with the first one on the cost of childcare. Many families are still paying very high costs. As a result of those high costs, some are choosing not to return to work because it is not worth their while. That primarily affects women - not always, but primarily. I hear of families still paying, depending on where they are in the country, up to €1,500 a month. I think the average is €800, which is still high. It is like a second mortgage. High costs are a barrier to formal childcare. They are a barrier to female labour market participation. They see an increase in child poverty.

Last year, prior to the alternative budget, we in Sinn Féin announced that we would advocate for €10 per child per day in childcare. This is something that was taken up by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. That is to be welcomed. I know it was something in election manifestos of all the main parties. However, there were no reductions in this budget toward the cost of childcare. It is something I thought would have started in this budget at least and continued over the next two years to reduce the cost. It is more challenging for families who are on a lower income to access childcare when the costs are significant. While I will acknowledge there have been subsidies and reductions, it does not actually benefit all of the families.

Some countries, like Norway and Finland in particular, have led the way where they have a publicly led childcare system. That has seen costs to parents fall dramatically. It is something that we should be looking at in this country as well. I note that there are a number of private operators that are not in core funding. Therefore, the families accessing those services are not benefiting from the reductions that they get through the national childcare scheme and core funding. What are the barriers or what can we do to ensure that all private operators are brought on board?Some were in core funding and left it. Some of that is to do with the bureaucracy involved or the fact fees were frozen while they were still quite low. Some parents choose to have their children minded by a childminder. While they cannot access core funding, a lot of them are not accessing the national childcare scheme. I think there are fewer than 150 registered nationally. We need to examine why that is and how we can bring more childminders on board so we can reduce fees.

Throughout last year’s general election campaign the then Taoiseach, Deputy Harris made continual references to a public childcare model being a key priority of Fine Gael were it to be returned to government. The programme for Government seems to have stepped away from this and instead commits the Government to "...undertake a broad consultation and publish a detailed Action Plan to build an affordable, high-quality, accessible early childhood education ... system ..." and add State-led capacity where needed. I do not think that consultation has started. Maybe the Minister could update us on that because I am not aware of anything having begun and it needs to begin as soon as possible. I urge the Government to examine the public model and investigate it. I am not saying it is a simple case of rolling something out as there are different models in other countries that could be looked at for ideas. If we have a public model of childcare that includes early education and after-school care, it will deliver affordability for parents and families and will give sustainability to providers, but it will also give quality for children and staff.

On our early educators, as of their latest wage increase, they are on €15 per hour. The national minimum wage is due to rise in January to €14.50. That means our early educators, some of whom have level 7 and level 8 degrees, are only receiving 75 cent per hour above the national minimum wage. We need to look at better pay for them. Many of them are leaving the sector - and that is one of the issues with capacity that I will deal with further later – but they are leaving and going into teaching or into schools as SNAs. We need highly-qualified personnel within our childcare model to ensure we deliver the quality our children need.

A public model of childcare will guarantee access, quality and affordability in every community. I want to ensure every child gets fairness in our childcare model regardless of their parents’ income or address. We want to see every child accessing high-quality early childhood education and care. It is achievable. As I referenced, other countries are doing it and we need to look at that and ensure we are delivering it here as well. We have a public healthcare system. It might not always work as we want it to work, but it is there and it works pretty well in most cases. We also have a public education system and that works really well, so we need to model early childhood education on that. It will mean long-term planning as it is not going to happen overnight. We need to look at capital planning for areas where there is need. We need to integrate better with our schools, our communities and our local authorities. We also need to embed Irish-medium provision as a core element within early childhood education. We should ensure there is outdoor play and inclusivity in all of them as standard and recognise early years as part of our public education continuum. If we invest in childcare, we are investing in children, in equality and in the future economy. Every euro spent on quality early education will return multiple times in social and economic benefits in the years to come.

I mentioned capacity and there are issues with that. In some cases, it is a shortage of physical space and in others, it is a shortage of staff. The building blocks scheme is a good one but it is for existing providers to extend their premises or buy or construct new buildings. Could this not be extended to new providers in the system and to include existing buildings? We have a huge level of vacancy, especially in our towns and villages. What better place to put our childcare facilities than embedded in a village or a town? These buildings have been constructed. Some of them are not in bad condition and could easily and very quickly be turned around to be suitable for the provision of early education. It would be a much faster solution. In the budget there was talk about extending schools and community centres, but the Minister was previously Minister for Education and she knows there are schools waiting for additional classrooms that are urgently needed, yet they are left waiting years for those to progress through the building section of the Department. We need classrooms for children with additional needs who cannot be educated locally because those classrooms and that space is not available. I cannot see how that is going to address the capacity issues that currently exist.

Senator Kyne submitted an amendment to the motion. Part of it "acknowledges that there continues to be evidence of some families having difficulty finding appropriate places at a cost that is affordable". We have 40,000 children on waiting lists. How can the Senator say it is only some families? It is a huge waiting list. I have referenced the cost. Nothing was done in the budget about the cost for families. Nothing was done in the budget about pay for educators. We need those issues tackled, as well as the capacity issue, to ensure every child has an opportunity to avail of early childhood education and that parents are able to work after maternity leave and are not coming into my office in tears because they cannot go back to work and must stay at home and look after the children because they cannot find suitable childcare.