Seán Haughey (Dublin North Central, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context

Question 526: To ask the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the measures he is taking to ensure adequate access to affordable child care; if new policy initiatives are being considered in this regard; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23938/05]

Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)
Link to this: Individually | In context

The Government is firmly committed to supporting parents with their child care needs through increased capacity, choice and service quality. These aims are the hallmark of the Government's child care strategy. To this end, considerable progress has already been achieved in terms of increasing the supply of quality centre-based child care places and in enhancing the awareness of quality issues across the entire child care sector but with special emphasis on child minders, who are key providers of non-centre-based child care in Ireland.

The Deputy is aware that there have been significant improvements in the provision of supports for the development of child care in recent years. Child care was identified as an investment priority under the National Development Plan 2000 — 2006. This was a direct response to the recommendations of the expert working group on child care established under Partnership 2000 to develop a strategy for the development and delivery of child care to support parents in employment, education and training.

The current equal opportunities child care programme, a seven year programme, has an equal opportunities and social inclusion perspective and facilitates the further development and expansion of child care facilities to address the needs of parents in reconciling their child care requirements with their participation in employment, education and training. It aims to increase the supply of centre-based child care places by 55% or some 31,000 places, by the end of the programme and I am happy to report that this target has been surpassed.

Since it was launched in 2000, the funding for the programme for the 2000 to 2006 period has increased from €317 million to €499.3 million, or by 57%, the most recent increase being €50 million in the budget of 2005. The multi-annual capital envelopes announced that day also included the injection of a further €40 million in additional capital funding into child care between the end of the programme and 2009.

Total funding committed since the programme commenced in 2000 is over €444 million, of which over €389 million has been allocated to child care facilities. This includes €45.6 million, which I announced last Wednesday, 22 June 2005. It is expected that the total funding allocated to child care facilities will lead to the creation of some 39,900 new child care places. Of these, I am delighted to note that 24,600 new places were already in place by December 2004. These new places offer parents greater access to affordable child care throughout the country as they balance their work and family needs.

The Deputy should note that more than €150 million of the total funding committed has been allocated to staffing grant assistance. This provides support towards the staffing costs of employing child care workers in community-based child care centres in disadvantaged areas, ensuring that less advantaged parents in those areas have increased access to quality child care and that they are charged fees which are less than the economic cost of providing the service.

New policy initiatives to promote the supply of quality child care are under the remit of my Department and are under consideration on an ongoing basis. The Deputy may be aware that, on 22 June 2005, I launched a new policy initiative on the development of school age child care in Ireland. The report, entitled "Developing School Age Child care in Ireland", makes a number of recommendations for the development of school age child care to support the needs of parents, including the use of school premises, where appropriate, as locations to develop a quality school age child care service. It also lays down guidelines for the delivery of a quality school age child care service. It is hoped that the publication of the report and its guidelines will spark local interest in the opportunities that exist to build such facilities. I also announced that I was making further funding available to the city and county child care committees to enable them to publicise the report locally and to identify school management authorities who might be interested in developing a service to complement and link with their school. New policy initiatives, such as this one, will help to ensure that parents have increased access to quality child care.

The programme also has a focus on many of the quality issues which were identified in the child care strategy and aims to ensure that there is a co-ordinated approach to the delivery of child care services throughout the country. I have also allocated more than €55 million to quality improvement measures, including funding to the city and county child care committees, funding to the national voluntary child care organisations, the national childminding initiative and the new partnerships for quality child care initiative.

This Government's record in providing enhanced child care supports is without parallel and I am confident that we are moving rapidly to ensure that there are quality services available to parents throughout the country.