Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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Since the announcement of the new community child care subvention scheme in July this year, my officials and I have taken every opportunity to communicate the details of the new scheme, as it stands, to those who will be most directly affected by it, the wider child care sector and the public generally. There continues to be misunderstandings as well as genuine concerns on the part of many community child care services about the new scheme. There is even the impression that the Government will somehow walk away from its €1.1 billion investment in child care from 2000 to 2010, more than half of which has been spent to date.

The policy under the equal opportunities child care programme of putting community based child care at the heart of our investment in child care, continues to be a fundamental principle under the national child care investment programme, NCIP. I am conscious of the contribution community volunteers and local effort have made to the success of both programmes. The new scheme is being introduced to continue this recognition and support for the community not-for-profit sector.

The Equal Opportunities Child Care Programme 2000-2006, known generally as the EOCP, was the Government's first major investment programme in child care and was co-funded by the Exchequer and EU Structural Funds. The programme has provided capital grant aid to child care providers to assist them with the building and refurbishment costs of their facilities. As a programme with a particular focus on disadvantage, a clear distinction was made between private sector grant recipients and community based, not-for-profit child care groups, with grants for the full building or refurbishment costs of community facilities being provided up to a ceiling per project of €1.4 million.

It was recognised that, even where the full capital cost of these projects was met through grant funding and despite being non-profit bodies, community child care groups which were located in disadvantaged areas and had a strong focus on disadvantage might not be in a position to become self-sustainable in the short to medium term. As a result, a specific allocation of funding targeted at disadvantaged parents and their children was made available through the EOCP staffing support grant to assist this category of community providers in their start-up years. The grant was given on a three year basis as a support towards the services' staffing costs. It took this form because supporting employment for child care workers qualified for grant aid under the EU rules governing the programme. The original three year funding under this scheme began to end for some groups from 2004 onwards. In most cases where the community services receiving staffing grants were able to confirm their continuing focus on disadvantage, they were approved for continuation funding to bring them up to the end of the EOCP in December this year.

The ability of projects which receive developmental aid to become self-sustainable over time through funding support in their developmental stage is an underlying principle of both European social funding and the Exchequer. The principle of self-sustainability was built into the EOCP from the outset and has been an explicit condition of grant approval since 2004 when the continuation funding commenced. As a result, every existing EOCP staffing grant recipient has agreed to operate a tiered fee system tailored to the differing economic circumstances of its client group which ensures that child care places subsidised by the programme are targeted towards those most in need. In effect, the grant recipients were required to use their grant aid to give a high degree of subsidisation to very disadvantaged parents, a lesser degree of subsidisation to less disadvantaged parents and no subsidisation other than the general benefit of the capital grant aid to non-disadvantaged parents.

The Exchequer funded community child care subvention scheme will continue to be based on the tiered fee system. Many but not all community child care groups complied with this requirement under the EOCP and operated effective tiered fee systems which enabled disadvantaged parents to access child care at reduced costs. For community services which were not implementing an effective tiered fee system until now, the new scheme may appear to be an intrusion into the way they operate their services. It is true that more could have been done to ensure these services implemented effective tiered fee structures following their introduction. However, the EOCP was administered in the spirit of a partnership approach to foster and support community services and the invaluable work and contribution to local child care services. As with any programme, particularly an innovative and developmental one such as the EOCP, there are lessons to be learned and we will build on the very substantial progress that has been achieved.

The value for money review of the EOCP made recommendations for a new community support scheme under the NCIP, which it identified as a transitional programme that should complete the development of new child care services, while longer-term child care policy would be considered in the context of a third child care programme for 2011 to 2015. These recommendations emphasised the need for the NCIP community support scheme to be based on having in place effective tiered fee structures with appropriate minimum and maximum fees. In addition, eligibility for funding should be monitored on an ongoing basis to ensure all services move towards sustainability when this is possible and the new scheme should be less ad hoc, more structured and transparent and better targeted at appropriate groups, including social excluded groups.

In considering those aspects of the staffing support scheme which could benefit from more structured and transparent systems and criteria, it is clear that a more consistent approach is required in determining the level of grant aid and the way it is used than was the case under the EOCP. To qualify for the staffing grant scheme community child care groups were first required to show they were located in a disadvantaged area, with the CLÁR and RAPID programmes as the two key indicators in this respect. After that, the group was asked to demonstrate in its grant application that it would adopt a strong focus on disadvantage. This was largely a self-reporting system with no clear data, particularly as time went by, on what was the actual level of disadvantage in the services. Clearly, with the economic upturn and high employment rates now enjoyed in Ireland, the profile of disadvantaged parents using the services has possibly changed considerably. Unless brought to our attention, this change in circumstance was not generally reflected in the level of grant aid provided.

As the profile of services in receipt of grant funding changed over time, different services responded in different ways. Many services implemented effective tiered fee structures enabling the broad range of parents and their children to benefit based on their ability to pay and ensuring a good social mix. Where services did not implement an effective tiered fee structure but charged reduced fees across the board, in some cases this resulted in very low fees for all parents, including non-disadvantaged parents, sometimes leading to an inability on the part of other, non-subsidised private sector providers in the area to compete. Where services combined the grant aid with their increasing ability to collect more substantial fees and adopted a higher, across the board rate, this often resulted in a very high quality of service provision but one that was outside the reach of disadvantaged parents for whom the grant aid was intended.

Another weakness of the present scheme is its non-transparency and the fact that the broadly drawn criteria resulted in a high level of subjectivity in the assessment of grant applications. There have been cases where applications from services with very similar levels of disadvantage and service provision were approved for substantially different levels of funding. Again, the subjectivity of the criteria was not assisted by the degree of self-reporting on which the system relied. In addition, the current scheme penalises large-scale services which have very disadvantaged profiles as the level of grant funding is capped and disadvantaged parents using a community service not located in a disadvantaged area could not avail of the subsidised fees as the scheme is defined by reference to the area rather than the parent.

All these issues highlight that in meeting the needs of the existing grant aided community child care sector as well as moving forward to any future child care programme of initiatives, we need to address a series of diverse and complex issues. However, the fundamental principle which must guide us in meeting these needs while, at the same time, further developing child care policy is that we ensure we find a fair and equitable approach to targeting disadvantaged parents using community child care facilities which is underpinned by transparency and accountability.

The new scheme has been portrayed widely as a cutback in funding for the community sector and disadvantaged parents and their children. Nothing could be further from the case. The new scheme has been given a total funding allocation of €153 million over three years. In 2008, some €47 million will be available to the new scheme while €37.25 million was available under the EOCP staffing scheme in 2007. It is a clear indication of our intent to build on the scheme and to provide additional funding. This substantial increase is intended to ensure the largest number of children and parents using community-based child care services benefit.

In the absence of sufficient data to enable my office to quantify and cost accurately a more generous scheme under the new, more transparent arrangements, it was decided to identify the most disadvantaged categories of parents at the outset. We could not disregard those parents and start at higher income levels, but we could not commit to a scheme that goes beyond the most disadvantaged categories until we were in a position to quantify and cost the outcome accurately. For this reason, an innovative and transitional approach to the introduction of the scheme was adopted. As more than 800 services are in receipt of staffing grant support, the first priority was to continue their funding during the transitional period. All existing grant recipients who apply for funding under the new scheme will receive their current level of funding during the first half of 2008.

On the basis of the information provided through applications, officials in my office will be able to establish a profile of each service in terms of the type of services provided, the profile of the parents using the services for their children, the operational costs and any other relevant data indicating a special need that requires a particular approach. At every opportunity, my officials and I have stressed that the data is essential to enable the assessment of the scheme as announced to be undertaken urgently to facilitate the existing services to move to the new scheme without disruption.

I expect that all services applying in the next week or so for funding under the community child care subvention scheme will be notified of their approval for transitional funding by early December. Subsequently, my office will be in contact with these services regarding the funding levels indicated from the information provided with their applications. The analysis of the data will be completed to enable me to report back to Government, as required in early 2008, with any further proposals to expand or improve the scheme. Subject to the Government's decision and any changes agreed, my office will be in further contact with the services. I cannot be specific in advance of any Government decision as to possible changes, but the way in which the scheme will be implemented will maximise the outcome for parents and children using community child care facilities and the funding provided for this purpose has been enhanced.

I wish to comment on a number of accusations made about the new scheme, including the accusation that it will lead to the segregation of children, with only the children of disadvantaged parents in community-based services. While capital grant aid is available under the EOCP and the NCIP to community-based child care services in disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged areas, the staffing support grant was intended for disadvantaged community services only. Non-disadvantaged community services were dependent on fee income alone. The new scheme will be available to all community-based child care services regardless of their location, thereby facilitating disadvantaged parents to access community services, which may not be the case currently, and improving the social mix.

As was the case under the EOCP, the tiered fee system underpins the principle that fee income plus grant aid equals operational cost. The community service will either charge the full operational cost to parents in respect of whom they are not receiving grant aid or the operational cost less the subvention being received in respect of qualifying parents. With some improvements on the EOCP, the profile of parents using a service will be cost neutral to the service.

A serious accusation levelled at the new scheme is that it penalises working parents, is targeted at parents on social welfare who do not need child care services and is a poverty trap. I refute these accusations.

Nicky McFadden (Fine Gael)
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It is the reality.

Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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The scheme has started from the point of the two most disadvantaged categories of parents, namely, those in receipt of social welfare payments and those in receipt of family income supplement payments. Parents in receipt of the former and availing of full day care services must pay the cost of the service as reduced by the subvention. Generally, this relates to those participating in back to work or community employment schemes, training or education, lone parents and young mothers completing secondary education. It is crucial that parents in receipt of social welfare payments can access affordable pre-school services for their children, for which reason the subvention scheme will be necessary. This latter category was excluded under the EOCP, as it was an employment support programme.

The scheme's other key target group is working parents on low income. As our starting point, we have identified the threshold for low income on the basis of eligibility for the family income supplement. The current net income threshold for this payment is €550 per week for a family with two children, which compares to a minimum wage income of €346 per 40 hour week and an average industrial wage income of €615 per week. An analysis of the data being received in the Department will enable us to consider changes to the income threshold.

Last week, some services stated that they have tiered fee structures in place where parents on social welfare payments are charged €6 per day. Where both parents are working, the charge is €8 per day. I do not accept that a difference of €10 per week between a family where both parents are working and a family where both are on social welfare payments represents a reasonable tiered fee system. Some 80% of child care services do not receive any subvention.

It is a misunderstanding that the community services are being asked to means test the parents using their services. The new scheme will use existing means tested criteria. In applying for funding, services will be asked to attach declaration forms completed by parents and containing a minimum amount of information, consisting of their PPS numbers, the number of children they have attending the service and whether they are in receipt of a social welfare entitlement or availing of various programmes or schemes. This will be a simple once per year exercise on the basis of which services will be advised of their funding levels for the following calendar year. Where the parent profile changes during a year and gives rise to an increased grant payment, the service can seek an adjustment at any time. In the majority of cases, the parent profile will not change significantly from year to year.

It is recognised that there may be particular issues for smaller scale services, but they will be considered when the data due to be returned this month is analysed. It is worth noting that the Data Protection Commissioner is satisfied with the proposed scheme and that parents will be invited to complete the declaration forms and provide their PPS numbers for the purposes of subventions under the scheme.

I hope the details I have outlined have addressed Senators' concerns. The community child care subvention scheme will provide an effective and equitable framework to continue supporting community child care services and targeting disadvantaged parents and their children. I am committed to completing the process of bringing the scheme into full effect in July 2008 following its final consideration by the Government on the basis of the comprehensive data analysis that I hope to complete in early 2008.

I am grateful for the opportunity to outline to the House some of the scheme's aspects. I would gladly return next week to respond to the particular issues raised by Senators. The Government is determined to build on the substantial progress made since 2000 in building a child care sector. To date we have invested some €530 million in the provision of new facilities and in assisting staffing costs. Another €575 million will be invested in the coming years. We are determined the child care subvention scheme will be effective, that those intended to benefit will do so and that the scheme will continue to assist in the provision of additional child care places in urban and rural Ireland.

Since last July, Department officials and I have been at pains to reiterate to each community group that we wanted the data for further analysis. One of the heartening revelations from that data is that the profile of the parents is changing because many people have had an opportunity to enter employment, which everyone in the Oireachtas welcomes. We are determined to ensure people on lower incomes will not be disadvantaged by the new scheme. We will ensure that when the scheme is finalised as a result of the analysis of our data, it will continue to build on the successful and substantial achievements under the equal opportunities child care programme. I would be glad to listen to the debate and deal with any issues that arise when we have the concluding debate next week.

Frances Fitzgerald (Fine Gael)
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It is difficult to know where to begin. Many community groups are in panic about this measure. This has been introduced in a clumsy way and without adequate consultation with the sector. Had there been adequate consultation, meetings would not be taking place throughout the country, every partnership in the country would not be calling meetings of their providers to try to tell the Minister about the severe distress this is causing to community groups. I will give several examples of the concerns local community play groups have. I will give the Minister of State a document detailing these concerns.

I will begin by reading an e-mail a woman recently sent me:

Today the Government made the decision for me that I shall only have one child. Up to now I had been trying to hold my ground against the grinding increases in all of life's necessities, but finally my husband and I must admit defeat. The Government has introduced the community child care subvention scheme. This will affect the crèche our daughter attends. Under the new scheme the level of grant aid to each facility will be based on the number of disadvantaged parents, which makes sense. However, parents will only receive assistance if they are in receipt of a social welfare payment. So once again couples like ourselves fall into the ever-widening and, frankly, terrifying gap. We both work — this is a necessity — therefore we will not be eligible for a reduction. Give up work, you say. Although the Government appears to be pushing me this way, we cannot afford to live on one salary. Whatever remains after child care is needed to pay bills. Up to now I thought I could muddle along, but now things have changed. This morning it seems the Government has won. This in one final increase we cannot overcome.

That is the feeling from one parent who is trying to access child care and who is extremely concerned based on what her local community child care group has told her about the implications of the scheme. Many people are concerned

The Minister of State's speech is detailed and I am trying to take everything in. In this extraordinary statement he almost admits what that woman said:

In the absence of sufficient data to enable my office to quantify and cost accurately a more generous scheme under the new, more transparent arrangements, it was decided to identify the most disadvantaged categories of parents at the outset. We could not disregard those parents and start at higher income levels, but we could not commit to a scheme that goes beyond the most disadvantaged categories until we were in a position to quantify and cost the outcome accurately.

Why cannot the Department do that?

Joe O'Toole (Independent)
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Hear, hear.

Frances Fitzgerald (Fine Gael)
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Why does the Department not have the data? Why does the Minister of State not know how much the scheme would cost if he were to make the changes and still include many of its beneficiaries, who come under the label of disadvantaged and who need the child care service? It seems decisions were made far from the reality of the desperate need of parents to access child care. There seems to be an assumption that these parents can go somewhere else. Only one in four applicants to the Clondalkin community child care service gets a place. There is a shortage of accessible, affordable child care. To make these changes and almost to rule out a number of the beneficiaries suggests that the Minister of State is far removed from what is happening. Is he aware that it is causing panic?

In the first line of the Minister's statement he says there are many "misunderstandings". I am glad he adds there are "genuine concerns" because it is not just about misunderstandings. How can one tell Clondalkin Partnership, which has been involved in running, supervising and developing community child care places for the last seven years, it is "misunderstanding" the scheme? It has analysed it in detail and shown how much more expensive the system will be and how many child care services will have to close. It is not making this up. These are genuine concerns. It will have detrimental effects on families and parents throughout the country.

While we welcome any increase in child care funding, extra funding is not an acceptable excuse for the adverse effects the new scheme will have on community creches. It will impose intolerable financial pressures on may parents by increasing the expense of child care. Parents in employment but not receiving social welfare will be penalised under the scheme. They will be excluded from benefiting from current child care subventions. I speak of parents on modest incomes who do not qualify for family income support. They will face increased child care costs if the Minister of State proceeds with this scheme without changing it or adding a new element for this group of parents.

I am not sure if the Minister of State said the Department will design a new scheme once it has all the data, which it should have had from the beginning. It looks like he said that. I hope he will extend the eligibility criteria as a result of the reaction. This scheme could force some parents out of employment as they will not be able to afford to pay for their children to be cared for while they work. The Minister's scheme will act as a disincentive to seek and remain in employment. Under the new scheme the prospects of parents working in the home returning to the work force or obtaining essential training and education will also be undermined.

Many community playgroups providing not-for-profit child care services have a legitimate concern that as a consequence of the new arrangements it will become financially impossible to continue to provide services. I have been informed that in my constituency of Dublin Mid-West, 400 child care places and 40 jobs are under threat should the Minister proceed with these changes. Such crèches cannot recruit permanent staff as they do not know whether they will be able to pay future salaries. This proposed scheme takes predictability and stability from community crèches. It strips the base out of the community child care system and operates on the belief that community schemes are cheaper to run than reality dictates. I am concerned that the scheme will militate against the creation of new community crèches, and at a time when only one in four applicants to such crèches receives a place this will be problematic. We need more of these schemes.

The Minister of State knows many of these schemes have been hard developed by people. Many of the women involved spent years working as volunteers trying to establish community crèches. Many have been there only seven or eight years. The Minister of State should not have undermined and frightened them in this way. He should have offered further support and if changes were needed, he should have engaged in consultation in a way that would have brought the sector with him.

I would like to draw the attention of the Minister of State to the effect his proposed changes will have on the funding of a number of community crèches in Clondalkin. The Cosy Kids after school child care facility will see a reduction of €53,664 in funding while St. Ronan's playgroup and Lime Tree Community Childcare Centre will face income reductions of €60,216 and €40,560, respectively. These figures have been supplied to me; they have not been made up. The sector fears that these are the amounts of money that will be lost and, as a result, child care places and access to child care will be more limited. Community child care has been a success story. Why should the facilities face such reductions?

Over recent weeks I have consulted a number of interest groups and organisations and, as a result, I wish to put a number of questions to the Minister of State. How much more will people in receipt of social welfare and family income supplement have to pay each week for child care as a result of the reduction in funding to community child care facilities? Why is the Minister of State removing the child care staffing grant when the value for money audit of the equal opportunities child care programme advocates its retention and on a multi-annual basis? If an audit is carried out of how a scheme is working and it makes recommendations about the staffing grant, why is the Minister of State not going along with that but proposing something different? Research indicates that more than 30% of community child care facilities will close in 2008 because of the shortfall created by this. Does the Minister of State know how many facilities built by Government and EU funding in the past two years may have to close or not open as a result of the subvention scheme? When will all existing crèches be informed of their staffing grant allocations for the six-month transition phase?

In addition, the Minister of State should respond to the concerns expressed by One Family, the support service for one-parent families in Ireland. The policy manager for this organisation, Candy Murphy, said yesterday that the child care subvention scheme contradicts the Government's proposed changes to the social welfare code which focus on getting people back to education and employment. The subvention scheme will create the opposite situation where parents on social welfare will be less likely to move into work for fear of losing income and being left with unmanageable child care costs. She went on to say that the scheme will increase the challenges for lone parents trying to move away from social welfare and to access meaningful and sustainable employment. Research shows that one-parent families face significant difficulties in making the transition from social welfare to work, including rising child care costs. Government plans to assist parents in overcoming these difficulties are wholly undermined by the proposed scheme. It must be re-examined.

The Minister of State must go back to the drawing board on this issue. He must engage in much more widespread and thorough consultation with the sector so its fears can be allayed. Whatever changes are introduced, they must be introduced in a way that ensures the community crèches survive and that there will be more, not fewer, child care places. I read for the Minister of State the e-mail I received from a mother who is very concerned about this. There are serious genuine concerns among the public about this issue. Detailed consultations with the Minister of State and his Department will be required to allay them. I urge the Minister of State to reconsider the scheme seriously to ensure the people who enjoy the advantage of child care under it will continue to enjoy it and that even more places are created by the establishment of more community child care crèches.

Access to child care is still a major issue in this country. It is still very expensive and consumes a huge proportion of parents' income relative to the situation in other European countries. I appreciate the Minister of State's attendance in the House today and thank him for his detailed speech. However, what I have outlined today reflects the real concerns that exist among the community and the parents using the very successful community child care scheme.

Mary White (Fianna Fail)
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In my document, A New Approach to Childcare, recommendation No. 5 states that the Government should provide greater financial supports for parents to break the cycle of poverty and unemployment. As spokesperson on children on the Government side of the House, I have studied this matter in detail so I believe my remarks will be balanced and informed.

The main motivation for the new scheme is to make child care funding transparent, measurable and accountable. It will allow the Government to help disadvantaged parents in a way that benefits them directly. It will also help by being focused on non-disadvantaged areas where there are very disadvantaged parents. How will this be done? Over the next two years there will be an increase of 16% in the money available to help parents who are disadvantaged. That represents a budget of €153 million. The new scheme aims to help those who are most disadvantaged.

The Department of Finance requested a value for money review of the staffing grant scheme. There is nothing wrong with that. This involves taxpayers' money and the Department of Finance, on behalf of the public, has a responsibility to ensure money spent on the child care sector is spent with integrity and fairly. The recommendations from that review gave rise to the new child care subvention scheme. I do not claim the scheme is perfect but am simply explaining the idea or plan behind it.

The Minister of State could look at the example of the Athboy community child care centre, which opened in 2004. It is a state-of-the-art facility, a beautiful building that blends with the area's environment. Athboy is a bustling town in the commuter belt. Many people have moved from Dublin to live in Athboy. Senator Fitzgerald mentioned an important point which I believe has not been given adequate attention by the Department. The Athboy child care committee was established by a group of volunteers in 2000. The volunteer community group engaged an architect, secured the site from Meath County Council, and applied for planning permission and a capital grant. It succeeded in securing €2.25 million, which covered 100% of the cost of the building. This was a group of volunteers, altruistic people who wished to meet the needs of their community. They gave their free time, were unpaid and put a considerable effort into delivering the beautiful building in Athboy. I recommend that everybody who has an interest in children and child care pay a visit to the centre.

This community child care centre operates from 7.30 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday to Friday, and is open for 51 weeks of the year. It provides full-time day care, part-time day care, breakfast club, after school club and all the food the children require. It costs €170 per week.

There is huge misunderstanding about the new scheme among the public. People's nerves appear to be rattled. Today, I urged one lady who runs a crèche to calm down, continue her work in the crèche and leave me to fight her corner with the Minister of State and his Department's officials. She is dealing with parents who are terrified that they will have to pay Dublin prices for their crèches. There are 84 children in the Athboy community child care centre. The typical parent commutes to a job in Dublin, Navan or Monaghan. Of the 84 children, the parents of 52 are in the subvention scheme. Nine of that number are in bands A and B while most of the parents are in band C but, as Senator Fitzgerald said, they are struggling.

Significant numbers of young parents are struggling to make ends meet. The lady who commented in the e-mail said she could not afford to go to the cinema or afford any luxuries. Young parents pay high mortgages or rents and are under pressure. I support the motivation of the Minister of State in gearing subvention towards assisting those who are disadvantaged. However, I wish to highlight the fact that people are nervous and terrified they will have to give up their jobs and stay at home.

Three weeks ago The Irish Times published the results of a survey on what women want. I asked my Fianna Fáil Party colleagues what they thought women wanted, but none of them came up with the answer. The response from the survey was that their top priority is financial independence. Women achieve that by working. Therefore, we cannot allow a situation develop where women will have to give up their jobs and their financial independence. The image of modern young women is that of stressed and worn out women with black rings under their eyes as a result of all their commuting and minding of children. However, the reality is that women with a job are happy, because they have a choice and their own money.

The newspaper article also referred to a survey conducted by Fionnuala Kennedy, who was on the Commission on the Status of Women in the early 1990s, for which she read more than 600 submissions. She was not surprised by the results published in The Irish Times, because her results, at the cusp of the Celtic tiger era——

Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)
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Senator White should be over on this side of the House.

Mary White (Fianna Fail)
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No, I said I supported the motivation behind the scheme, and the Minister of State understands that. I am speaking of the group left out. Among the submissions received by Fionnuala Kennedy was a letter from a surgeon's wife in County Cork, who did not have the money to buy a pair of tights. Another submission came from the wife of a high-ranking Army officer who had to plead for the few pounds necessary to meet friends for a coffee. The marriage bar is gone now and there are huge employment opportunities. Women yearn to develop their potential, receive training and have financial independence. The people using child care are not just those who are working, but also those who are going back to college for an education so that they can get a better job.

The community crèche in Athboy will have a deficit of €54,000 if it does not continue to get the nine staffing grants it currently receives. I told the manager today that I believed, as a business person, it should be possible for the crèche to continue in business. If it has 84 children, it should be able to do the sums and work it out——

Joe O'Toole (Independent)
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The Minister of State should just write it a cheque.

Mary White (Fianna Fail)
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I advised the manager to calm down and wait for the Minister to get a fix on the issue, and that please God he would be able to introduce a band C group so that people on lower incomes would get some form of subvention.

Part of the problem with this issue is that the introduction of the scheme and the need for the form to be returned was rushed. Some community crèches have been active and efficient and able to get the information in on time and the pressure of having everything in by 26 October was not too drastic for them. However, one manager told me she would love to have had the time to call the parents together to explain to them why they wanted the personal information. I see nothing wrong with people having to give their PPS number. Why not, if the organisation and the facilities are being funded by taxpayers' money? People have complained that they should not have to provide information on whether they are on social welfare, but I do not go along with that. In any business, people must——

Fiona O'Malley (Progressive Democrats)
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Senator White has one minute remaining.

Mary White (Fianna Fail)
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This is a serious matter. The other example of concern is Ringsend crèche. This is a perfect example of a situation where the Minister of State has said he will help disadvantaged parents in areas——

Joe O'Toole (Independent)
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On a point of order, I understand Senator White still has five minutes, because it was agreed speakers would have 15 minutes.

Fiona O'Malley (Progressive Democrats)
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I am advised the speaker has ten minutes.

Mary White (Fianna Fail)
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It is a very important issue, so I would like some flexibility on time.

Fiona O'Malley (Progressive Democrats)
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I respect that, but other speakers also have important points to make.

Mary White (Fianna Fail)
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Go raibh míle maith agat. The Minister of State has said that the Department will be able to help disadvantaged parents who live in areas of economic advantage. For instance, Dublin 4 is the most exclusive postal address in Dublin, but there is a pocket of disadvantage in parts of Ringsend. Those people are terrified their crèche will also have to close down. Most of the crèche's clients are working, but they are in low-paid jobs. Many of them are non-nationals. They are not in the A or B bands, but many of them live in the O'Rahilly and Whelan social housing. We would like to keep that group at work, retraining or studying so that they can develop their potential. This group would be the perfect example of a group that should be helped under the departmental brief to help disadvantaged groups in advantaged areas.

I laud the approach of the Minister of State and the determination to obtain data on those availing of the system to ensure people do not misuse it. The Department of Finance has a responsibility to ensure that moneys are used properly and data will be effective in ensuring this. However, there was not adequate dialogue with the people who work voluntarily in these community crèches.

Ms Irene Cafferkey, the manager of the Roscommon child care centre, did her thesis on the value of the contribution of the volunteers in the Roscommon area and found the value of the work of volunteer parents in the crèches in Roscommon to be €270,000 a year. That is the reason parents are upset. They have not been given enough time for dialogue on the proposal nor has the change been sufficiently explained for them to have respect for the Minister.

Most of the volunteers in community crèches are women. I have tried to get this point across at parliamentary party meetings. We hear that it is impossible to get people to do voluntary work, but there are women in community crèches throughout the country doing voluntary work, for which they should get adequate recognition. I do not mean they should get financial recognition because that is not what they want. However, they should get some respect and honour for all the work they do.

I understand the Minister of State is doing his best as a serious politician and I am confident he will address the difficulties in the scheme. He has said that depending on the information he gets, he will look at the situation again in January. There is nothing wrong with that approach. We cannot carve a scheme in stone. Most businesses or Government policies that fail do so because when schemes are introduced they are carved in stone and nobody ever reviews them to see if they are achieving what they are supposed to achieve. That must not happen in this instance.

Joe O'Toole (Independent)
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I wish to share my time with Senators Bacik and Mullen.

Fiona O'Malley (Progressive Democrats)
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Is that agreed? Agreed.

Joe O'Toole (Independent)
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I welcome the Minister of State to the House and wish him well. The first call I received this morning was from someone in his constituency involved in the child care area who is rightly very upset with this legislation. It is not a question of what is in the Minister of State's proposal, but of what is missing from it. That is where the problem lies. There is an economic strategy to attract people into the workplace. While I do not want to sound sexist about this, in general, this strategy currently refers to attracting women into the workplace for their economic contribution to the GDP and GNP of this State. That is what needs to happen but whether we like it or not, the issue of child care is very much a women's issue. The cost of it is shared but in the main, although not exclusively, the responsibility for it falls on women's shoulders. I want to make that point because much else flows from it. If men were more reliant on child care much more would have been done in the meantime.

What can be done and what is not in the Minister of State's proposal? The Minister of State is technically right in stating it is not means tested but based on other figures including the family income supplement. The real issue, however, is that people just above the threshold will feel they are going to be hit once more. I accept the point the Minister of State is making but what can he do about that?

Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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Senators should re-read the script, which was fairly clear.

Joe O'Toole (Independent)
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Yes, absolutely. I said that one must start somewhere but it is incorrect and unfair to say we are talking about people on low incomes. There is a simple way to deal with those who do not reach the threshold to which the Minister of State referred. If the State recognised the cost they are paying for child care, the obvious thing is to grant them tax relief on that expenditure. That would create a level playing pitch and would mean that persons going out to work would not be discommoded as much, although they would still face unacceptable costs. We are currently losing a major creative input for the economy because large numbers of women in particular do not have this opportunity. The Minister of State is correct in saying that one must start somewhere and it is important to start with the severely disadvantaged and then move to those working on the minimum wage. The Minister of State cited the figure of €550 per week, but what can one say to the person above that threshold? The Department of Finance will say there is always somebody above the threshold, but we are penalising people for going out to work.

In my last employment, I lost three superb workers due to the cost of child care. They were not in low-paid employment but they could not afford the costs involved. By the time they covered such costs plus taxation and the other displacement costs of going out to work, it was not worth their while to do so. We are all losing out because of this. The Department of Finance does not recognise that there is a loss to the State in this. It looks at the penny-pinching aspects of giving money here or there, but we are all losing as a result.

To move forward from the Minister of State's points, while recognising what he has done, people above that threshold should be at least permitted a tax break. If they pay between €200 and €500 per week for crèche facilities, depending on the number of children they have, what is the argument against giving them a tax break on that cost? I would like to hear it. I will give the Minister of State an argument to use with the Department of Finance in the Estimates debate. Given that we are losing the creative and financial input of such people who cannot afford to go to work because of child care costs, what does it cost the State? We are all losers as a result.

Ivana Bacik (Independent)
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This is nothing less than a fiasco. Reading between the lines of the Minister of State's speech, he acknowledged that there are genuine concerns among parents and child care providers in the real world about the effect of the Government's proposed scheme. The Government's announcement has caused grave concern for large numbers of parents and child care providers and has thrown them into a panic because of the clumsy and inadequate way in which it has been introduced, and due to the piecemeal method in which child care generally is dealt with by this Government. The Government has been in power for ten years, yet in all that time we have never had a fully thought out, comprehensive child care policy. This subvention scheme merely targets the most disadvantaged parents. A mother wrote to Senator Frances Fitzgerald and others expressing her distress at this policy. There are many parents like her who are in low-paid work and simply cannot afford child care without State subventions, but this scheme does nothing to address their fears. The cost of private child care in Dublin is €200 to €250 per child per week from net income. The Minister said the proposal provides for a net income threshold of €550 per week for a family with two children, but that would only cover the cost of two children in a crèche.

Joe O'Toole (Independent)
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Yes, exactly.

Ivana Bacik (Independent)
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It is far too low. Government policy must address the question of parents who are paying for child care in the private sector, yet we have seen nothing in ten years. The subvention scheme targets those who are most disadvantaged but as the Minister of State said, 80% of child care services receive no subvention. It is unacceptable that the Government has no tax break policy to support parents struggling to meet the costs of private child care providers.

The change announced by the Government has caused grave concern for those just above the threshold who feel the Government has effectively introduced through the back door a one-child policy. It has removed the possibility for many parents to contemplate having a second child due to the high cost of child care. In addition, many parents and child care providers have expressed genuine concerns that the effect of this scheme will be to create a segregated or ghettoised system where children of parents on social welfare will remain in community-supported, not-for-profit child care places, while everybody else will have to avail of privately provided facilities. That is simply not good enough for parents who work outside the home.

We have long accepted the principle, rightly, that child benefit is a universal, non-means tested payment payable to all parents whatever their incomes. We must also accept that the needs of all children are universal; they all require high-quality child care if their parents work outside the home. Yet, in ten years there has been no attempt by the Government to develop a universal child care policy that would address the needs of all parents who work outside the home. That is the fundamental problem. This subvention scheme and the change the Government has announced has created particular problems for parents. It has shown us once again that the Government is capable of making U-turns, as it did on provisional licences, when there is an outcry. It now seems there will be a change from the original announcement and that the scheme will allow continued subsidy for working parents on low incomes. The difficulty, however, is, as the Minister of State said in his speech, that we do not yet know what the income threshold or level of subsidy will be. It is simply not good enough that child care providers and particularly parents will be left in this period of uncertainty, unable to plan ahead. Many parents will be considering whether they will be able to have another child and at what age their child can avail of child care, but they cannot plan effectively. They know what their income is, but they do not yet know what the cost of child care in a community facility will be, assuming they can obtain such a place for their children. As we have already heard, there is another enormous problem concerning the shortage of child care places.

In so many other policy areas, as with driving licences and road safety generally, we have seen ill-conceived, badly-planned policies being grandly announced, only to be followed by U-turns, changes and other tweaking. People are then left in great uncertainty without being able to plan ahead. The difficulty with planning may mean the difference between being able to have another child or not, as the mother from Cork has written. It is not good policymaking and it is simply not good enough for parents who work outside the home, nor for children.

The Government should be looking to develop a child care policy that seeks to provide affordable, high quality child care services for the children of all parents working outside the home. The Minister should take responsibility for the Government's failure over ten years to do so and, at the very least, he should apologise to parents who will be affected by this latest change for the uncertainty into which he has cast them.

Rónán Mullen (Independent)
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I reiterate what has been said about the need for a more unified thinking around the issue of parenting and child care. It is vital that we have more family friendly employment practices. Today's article by Ailish Connelly in The Irish Times tells of some very disquieting attitudes in the workplace towards women when it comes to taking maternity leave and having children. This is an economically counterproductive attitude shown by many employers. As women approach their early to mid-30s, they will want to take time off work but it is a time when they will have engaged in much training and are moving into senior management positions. By not facilitating the possibility for people to take two years out for those important first years of their children's lives, employers show that there has been little change in their attitudes in this area. One would expect there to be a more generous attitude by employers.

In trying to get the balance right between the needs of parents who choose to work in the home and those who choose to remain in the workplace, I disagree with Senator White in her emphasis on the financial independence of women. The core issue must always be parental choice. Parents should not be militated against no matter what choice they make. It is a very personal, family-centred decision about who is responsible for the children and how they are to be raised. Whereas the tax individualisation policy was introduced to address the chronic shortage of employees in the workplace, we now face a new dispensation in which we have an ageing population and we need more pro-natal and pro-family policies. As the ratio of those on pension and in the workplace becomes more problematic, we need to plan to ensure we get the balance right. We need more pro-natal policies.

It appears that there has been a turnabout in the community child care subvention scheme and the Minister is due to announce a new income threshold next February under which families on low incomes will be able to access subsidised child care. As has been said by many in this House, there was considerable concern among child care providers about the fact that many people on low incomes would no longer be able to avail of the subvention that was previously available under the equal opportunities childcare programme 2001-2006. It remains to be seen what will happen but if there was the slightest concern that families on low income were to be excluded from subvented child care, that would be a disaster. It would go against all our policy intentions. It would leave people with the choice of either paying for private child care or going back on the live register.

I have a concern, an ethical issue, about what appears to be envisaged under the new regime whereby child care providers will be charged with seeking information from families about their income status. One must wonder about the ethics of this when one considers that child care providers, especially among disadvantaged people, are already tasked with the difficult problem of helping families and children along the way.

Mary White (Fianna Fail)
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That is no argument. It has been cleared by the data protection group.

Rónán Mullen (Independent)
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It is one thing for it to be cleared by the data protection group and another to put child care providers working in sensitive situations dealing with parents in this difficult position and perhaps damaging the relationship of trust that has been carefully nurtured over time.

Mary White (Fianna Fail)
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Has the Senator ever visited a crèche?

Rónán Mullen (Independent)
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I am involved indirectly with the organisation of child care facilities and I think the Senator should take more account of the very legitimate concerns expressed by some child care providers, especially those in Dublin's inner city.

Mary White (Fianna Fail)
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That is ridiculous.

Déirdre de Búrca (Green Party)
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I thank the Minister of State for his presentation and his clarification on some of the issues surrounding this important debate on State subvention for the community child care scheme. The availability of quality child care services is very important for working parents and parents who want to access education and training. It is especially important where people from disadvantaged areas are concerned because the only way we will assist people in helping to break the cycle of poverty and disadvantage is to make child care available to enable them to go back into education and training which will allow them to take up employment opportunities subsequently.

Private child care in this country is very expensive and child care costs are among the highest in Europe. Community child care services cater for low income families and it is important we have a clear vision of how we want community child care to develop. The equal opportunities childcare programme 2001-06 was successful in funding and supporting community child care centres. The funding was allocated on the basis of staffing grants which allowed these not-for-profit community groups to set up local crèches. There was a desirable social mix of children in those centres, some of whom were from disadvantaged and low income families and others who availed of the community service that might not have been in their locality otherwise.

The proposed change in the subvention scheme has come about as a result of the value for money review that was carried out. The thrust behind that review was to figure out whether children from disadvantaged families were getting the best possible support from the State. The idea was to try to ensure that there is more effective targeting of that funding at the children from disadvantaged families. As we make the transition from one scheme to another, however, there will be problems and unintended impacts. The Minister of State should look at how these might be alleviated in the early years. The difficulty of moving from funding based on staffing grants to funding tied to the individual child may leave some crèches in a position where they may have to put staff on protective notice. They may also consider the possibility of losing children if they do not feel they have enough families availing of social welfare to use the services of their crèches.

There may be a possibility of some kind of general grant to these crèches being continued for a period as well as the more individualised, child-centred payments proposed. Perhaps some consultation between these service providers and the Department might be useful. I know the Minister of State has been looking for feedback from them on this issue. It would be helpful to hear constructive proposals from the sector about how they feel the transition problems might be overcome.

Some Senators have proposed that there be recognition of a category of low income parents that have not been mentioned to date. The scheme mentions parents on social welfare and the family income supplement, but we may need to look at categories such as parents on a medical card or others who have a general practitioner visit card entitlement. The Minister of State is well-disposed to this but it would be unfortunate if the new system excluded low income families that happened to fall outside the current parameters. Members are aware of the difficulties associated with categorising funding no matter how inclusive one attempts to be.

Fiona O'Malley (Progressive Democrats)
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As it is 5 p.m., I ask the Senator to move the adjournment of the debate. Five minutes remain to her if she so chooses.

Déirdre de Búrca (Green Party)
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I have said what I wanted to say. I thank the Minister of State and move the adjournment.