Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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665. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs if her attention has been drawn to the fact that a number of child care providers in the Cork city area may potentially not be able to continue to provide a zero to three years service due to a lack of staff caused by changes in regulation; the action she intends to take to resolve this; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [6676/17]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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I am aware that providing care for children below the age of three results in higher costs to services than caring for older children as a result of the legally required adult:child ratio, which is as low as 1:3 in the case of the youngest children.

Some services providing this care, including those in Cork City, have been impacted by the full implementation of the Child Care Act 1991 (Early Years Services) Regulations 2016, which requires that all staff should hold a minimum FETAC level 5 qualification, when working directly with children. In several cases, services have been utilising staff working on Community Employment (CE) schemes to count towards their required ratios, and under the regulations, this will only be allowed when the individual in question has the necessary qualification.

In order to assist services in addressing this challenge, I recently announced that €1m of additional funding will be made available to childcare providers who have been facilitating the training of Community Employment (CE) scheme workers, to ensure that regulatory changes do not impact on service delivery or the availability of childcare places.

In preparation for the implementation of the Child Care Act 1991 (Early Years Services) Regulations 2016, Childcare Committees Ireland were commissioned by my Department to investigate the impact of new childcare regulations on community childcare providers.

This research indicated that the vast majority of services would not face financial hardship as a result of changes required under the regulations. However this did find that some services had come to rely on Community Employment scheme workers, and I determined that these services should be provided additional funding to enable them to recruit and retain qualified staff to work alongside their CE scheme participants.

As a result, I have made available up to €2,000 for services to assist with the recruitment process or to provide expert support in HR management, and I will make sufficient additional money available to each service after analysis of their individual financial situation to ensure that they can fully meet the cost of these staff until September 2017. After this time these services should be in a position to fund these places through their own income; but this will be kept under review. No service will be forced to close.

Delivering high quality, accessible and affordable childcare is my key goal, and this funding will ensure that every child will be cared for by a qualified professional, and that services can sustain existing levels of provision, while they prepare for the new Affordable Childcare Scheme. Services are also providing more ECCE places than ever before, and I am confident that over 125,000 children will be receiving free pre-school care and education this summer.

All Community Childcare services around the country were afforded an opportunity to engage with the Childcare Committees Ireland project during 2016; over 200 did so, and detailed analysis has been completed. As some services clearly needed additional funding to maintain service levels, this money has now been allocated from the provision made for Sustainability Funding in Budget 2017, and will be available for drawdown from next week, with Pobal making payments on behalf of Cork City Childcare Committee.

The new Affordable Childcare Scheme, when introduced, will provide financial support for parents towards the cost of childcare. The universal element of the Scheme will be available to all families with children between the age of 6 months and 36 months (or until the child qualifies for the free pre-school programme if later than 36 months).