Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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831. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs if consideration has been given to the concerns raised by the community child care sector that the proposed new affordable childcare scheme will reduce the support for school going children of parents that are unemployed; if there is consideration of this in the drafting of the Bill; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [11931/17]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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I wish to inform the Deputy that consideration has been given to how the new Affordable Childcare Scheme will benefit the children of parents that are unemployed.

The benefits of moving to an income-basis for eligibility under the new scheme include:

- Clarity, with a move away from a complex array of eligibility criteria to a single, clear basis.

- Reduction of welfare traps and increased support for progression into employment and retention in employment.

- Equity, in ensuring that low-income working families are not excluded from benefitting from subsidised childcare.

The base income threshold guarantees that the maximum rate of subsidy is available to all families below the relative income poverty line, while ensuring that the taper rate between the base and maximum thresholds does not generate strong disincentive effects with regard to taking up or increasing employment. It also ensures that the majority of current scheme beneficiaries will receive the maximum subsidy rate under the new scheme.

While the new scheme will target subsidies predominately based on income, it was considered whether other criteria such as a work/training requirement should also apply, i.e. whether the family needs childcare because both parents, or, one parent in the case of a one-parent family, are working or in training.

Incorporating a work/training test into the eligibility criteria ties the scheme more clearly to its labour market participation objective. The labour market objective also has implications in terms of hours of availability, given parents’ need for childcare availability to match hours of work.

Given that both a child development objective and a labour market objective are relevant to this scheme, it was determined that there should be a balanced approach to eligibility: while people would qualify for a subsidy based purely on income, parents’ participation in work/training would determine whether that eligibility is for a subsidy towards enhanced hours of childcare (up to 40 hours per week) or towards standard hours childcare (up to 15 hours per week)

When parents are not in work or training, childcare will be subsidised on a standard hours basis (except in cases where sponsors support a childcare subsidy for families with high levels of need). This approach will mean that this scheme is open – albeit for standard hours rather than enhanced hours – to parents who stay at home to care for their children, and are not taking part in work or training, but who choose to avail of up to 15 hours of childcare per week. In the case of school going children it is considered that the child development objectives are met through school going hours and, as such, the 15 standard hours childcare applies to non-term time.

Under the existing CCS programme, to be replaced by this new scheme, beneficiaries qualify for full-time childcare subsidies even if they are not in work or training. As such, existing affected beneficiaries will enjoy a “saver” status, whereby they will retain their existing benefits for one year following the introduction of the new scheme. However, thereafter they, and any similar new entrants to the scheme, who are not in employment, will qualify for the standard hours only.