Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein)
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I welcome the Minister of State, although I am disappointed that the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs could not be here this morning. This week is very significant for child care workers and early years educators throughout Ireland. It is the week in which they go in their thousands to sign on for the dole for the summer. Under the early childhood education and care programme, early years educators are employed on fixed-term contracts of 38 weeks per year, under which they typically work part time for 15 hours per week. Once the 38 weeks are over, educators go on the dole for the summer, after which period they may or may not receive another 38-week contract. There are no employment benefits such as pension, maternity pay or sick pay.

What a telling indictment of the current child care model this is. We cannot even provide full-time positions to the thousands of highly qualified child care professionals who raise our children. The precarious nature of the child care sector is policy driven as a lot of the providers are dependent on State funding which, frankly, is inadequate. Community not-for-profit providers were traditionally funded by the community child care subvention scheme, which provided for full-time, permanent positions with much higher rates of pay. This latter model shows that Government policy can be used in a positive way to drive employment practices.

I am afraid the facts about current pay and conditions in this sector speak for themselves. The average rate of pay is €10.27 per hour. To put that in context, one can get better pay making sandwiches in Centra. What does this tell us about the value we put on child care? Research carried out by Early Childhood Ireland at the end of March 2017 demonstrated the depth of the staffing crisis, as 86% of facilities expressed concern that problems recruiting staff will impact on the viability of their service. Moreover, 36% of those who tried to recruit staff in the last 12 months were unable to find anyone suitable. Of those who have had staff leave in the last 12 months, nearly 60% cited as a reason that working in the sector was not financially viable. It is no wonder, therefore, that the sector had a staff turnover rate of 28.4% in the last 12 months.

I ask the Minister of State to imagine the impact this must have on the quality and continuity of care for the children. Child care professionals are voting with their feet and leaving the sector. In many cases, they are also leaving the country. These statistics show what we already know, namely, that the sector is in crisis. To be fair, I acknowledge that the crisis is not of the Minister, Deputy Zappone's making. She has inherited the, situation which is the result of decades of Government neglect. However, it is fair to ask what steps she is taking to address the situation in terms of pay and conditions for workers in the sector.

SIPTU's Big Start campaign gives the Minister a roadmap to a better future of regulated early years education in which standards are underpinned by a sectoral employment order. I raised the issue of child care 12 months ago and nothing has changed since then. In 12 months' time, will we still have thousands of child care workers signing on for the dole? Will they still be working for one euro less than a living wage? It is not good enough and I hope the Minister of State will have something positive and concrete to say.

Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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On behalf of the Minister, Deputy Zappone, I thank Senator Gavan for raising this important issue today, as it touches on a key area of consideration for the early years sector. Practitioners in the early years care and education sector play a critical role in delivering high-quality services for children and families and they deserve to be recognised, valued and respected for this. It is proven by the European Commission and others that for children to receive high-quality services, certain factors must be present. For example, a good curriculum and a good monitoring and inspection regime are essential but so too is a valued and respected workforce that is appropriately remunerated.

It is acknowledged that pay and conditions are major issues being experienced by the child care sector in Ireland at present and that these conditions lead to difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff. Alongside addressing affordability for parents, this needs to be addressed. There have been calls for a nationally agreed pay scale for the child care workforce. The State is not the employer and we must leave the negotiation of a pay scale to the Workplace Relations Commission, the Labour Court and the sector itself, both employers and employees.

An obvious mechanism to be considered is a sectoral employment order, SEO. Under an SEO process, organisations substantially representative of employers and employees come together to agree a way forward and submissions are sought from key stakeholders. As a significant funder, and with policy responsibility for quality, the Department of Children and Youth Affairs would be well placed to make a submission to this process. The Minister, Deputy Zappone, is aware that the trade unions are active in seeking to achieve a critical mass of representation on the employees' side to pursue an SEO.The Minister welcomes discussions in the sector to identify an organisation substantially representative of employers.

The Government continues to invest in the early years sector. Budget 2017 saw a 35% increase in child care funding, which was on top of a similar increase in the 2016 budget. These increases reflect the emphasis being placed on developing a quality service with appropriately supported staff. To go some way towards addressing cost pressures faced by providers in the sector, €14.5 million was secured in 2017 to enable providers to be paid for non-contact time. For the average early childhood care and education, ECCE, service with 25 children, this will mean an additional payment of approximately €2,400 per annum. The Minister, Deputy Zappone, is pleased to inform the Senator that this payment will be issuing over the coming weeks. Only recently the Minister announced that an extra €3.5 million will be made available to child care providers in the form of a non-contact time payment. This will benefit child care providers participating in the community child care subvention and the training and employment child care programmes. All services signed up to deliver these schemes from September will be invited to apply.

The programme for Government also commits to carrying out an independent review of the cost of providing quality child care. This commitment aligns closely with work on the design and development of a new single affordable child care scheme, and the Minister and her officials are progressing this work in that context. The review will feed into future policy development, including with regard to levels of payments to services. In conclusion, the Department of Children and Youth Affairs is grateful to the child care sector for the way in which it has engaged with the Department to seek to address quality, access and affordability issues. The attendance of child care providers and practitioners at recent information events around the country, their representation on the early years forum which the Minister established last year and their work on various working groups are greatly appreciated and are assisting in finding solutions to the many challenges. The Minister, Deputy Zappone, also wishes to acknowledge that while important first steps have been taken to seek to address key challenges for the child care sector, much work remains to be done. The Minister is committed to working with her colleagues in the Government to deliver on the many commitments in the programme for a partnership Government.

Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail)
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I ask Senator Gavan to be brief, bearing in mind that the Minister of State, Deputy Jim Daly, is not the line Minister.

Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein)
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That is a fair point. I thank the Minister of State for the reply. This is the first time I have been given a reply that makes a positive mention of a sectoral employment order, which I welcome. I hope there is the political will to make that happen, because it is not good enough simply to say that it is up to the employers. The Department has a positive role to play in making it happen. It has happened in other sectors such as cleaning and security and with political will it can happen in this one.

The Minister, Deputy Zappone, inherited a model of child care that I do not believe she would have designed. Does the Minister of State believe that the current model, based on precarious work and low pay, is sustainable? If it is not, and I do not believe it is, are the Minister and the Department prepared to work with key stakeholders, such as Early Childhood Ireland and SIPTU, to develop a new model?

Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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I cannot speak for the Minister but I will pass the Senator's questions to her and ask her to reply directly to him. The Department is not the employer in this case but I accept that it has a policy role to play to ensure there is sustainability in the sector into the future. I will convey the Senator's concerns and comments to the Minister.