Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth debate -
Tuesday, 25 Jun 2024

Implementation of Sustainable Development Goals: Discussion

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Apologies have been received from Deputies Kathleen Funchion, Sean Sherlock and Michael Creed and Senators Lynn Ruane and Tom Clonan. Senator Alice-Mary Higgins will substitute for Senator Ruane. The agenda item for consideration is a discussion on the implementation of the sustainable development goals with the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy Roderick O'Gorman. Joining the Minister from his Department is Ms Bridget Wilson from the child poverty and well-being division. They are welcome to the meeting.

There are 17 interlinked sustainable development goals and the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth is considered the lead or stakeholder Department in terms of the implementation of many of these goals. The aim of the meeting is to hear from the Minister about the ongoing progress by the Department on implementing the relevant goals.

Before I begin, there are a few housekeeping matters we need to go through. I advise members that the chat function on Microsoft Teams should only be used to make the team on site aware of technical issues or urgent matters and should not be used to make general comments or statements. I also remind members of the constitutional requirement that a member must be physically president within the confines of the Leinster House complex in order to participate in public meetings. I will not permit a member to participate where he or she is not adhering to this constitutional requirement. Therefore, any member who attempts to participate from outside the precincts will be asked to leave the meeting. In this regard, I ask members participating via Microsoft Teams to confirm, prior to making a contribution, that they are on the grounds of the campus.

In advance of inviting the Minister to deliver his opening statement, I will advise the witnesses of the following in relation to parliamentary privilege. The evidence of witnesses who are physically president or giving evidence from within the parliamentary precincts is protected, pursuant to the Constitution and statute, by absolute privilege. Witnesses and members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

The opening statement will be followed by a question-and-answer session with members. I invite the Minister to deliver his opening statement.

Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (Deputy Roderic O'Gorman)

I thank the Leas-Chathaoirleach and welcome the opportunity to meet the Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth on the progression of the sustainable development goals. As the committee knows, in Ireland a whole-of-government approach is taken to the implementation of these goals. My Department has done a considerable amount of work towards their attainment, particularly in the areas of poverty, reducing inequality and achieving gender equality, decent work and economic growth. I will briefly outline some of the progress made in recent years by my Department.

One of the most important ways to address child poverty is through the provision of affordable and quality early childhood care and education. The benefits of high-quality early learning and childcare are widely acknowledged, with immediate and long-lasting outcomes. It provides opportunities for children to play and interact with their peers, and promotes children’s overall well-being and good physical and mental health. It also allows parents to participate in training and employment in the knowledge that their children are safe, happy and well cared for. Labour force participation, in turn, increases family income and reduces the risk of poverty. Participation in early learning and childcare benefits all children, but has the greatest benefit for children living in poverty and is a critical intervention in breaking cycles of intergenerational exclusion and deprivation. Through increased funding in budgets 2023 and 2024, there will be improved affordability for parents, improved availability of early learning and childcare places and additional supports for children with a disability and-or experiencing disadvantage.

Another important way in which my Department addresses child poverty is through investment in youth services for disadvantaged young people to build their personal and social capacity. The UBU Your Place Your Space scheme is aimed at providing out-of-school supports to marginalised, disadvantaged or vulnerable young people to enable them to achieve their full potential. The scheme focuses on developing the emotional intelligence, communication skills, confidence, planning and problem solving, creativity and imagination, relationships, resilience and determination of disadvantaged young people. Evidence shows that approaches that focus on building social and emotional capabilities can have very long-term impacts on young people’s well-being and development.

More directly, my Department also supports young people as key actors in addressing sustainable development goals through supporting impactful youth climate justice projects in the youth sector. My Department is looking at ways to further embed the sustainable development goals in youth service provision in the context of our forthcoming new national strategy on youth work and related services.

My Department also supports children, parents and families through parenting support programmes and family support services. The Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2023 was enacted on 4 April 2023, and introduces important entitlements for workers, including leave for medical care purposes for parents of children under 12, five days of paid domestic violence leave, the right to request flexible working arrangements for parents and carers and the right to request remote working for all employees.

Reporting under the Gender Pay Gap Information Act 2021 began in 2022 for employers with over 250 employees and will extend in 2024 to those with over 150 employees and, in 2025, to those with over 50 employees. My Department is developing a centralised database for organisations to upload information on their gender pay gaps. Gender equality has been promoted and advanced in Ireland under a whole-of-government policy framework provided by the national strategy for women and girls, which was extended, due to Covid-19, for a further year to the end of 2021. Work has now begun on a consultation exercise to inform the development of the successor strategy to the national strategy-----

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Could everyone who is participating remotely make sure they are on mute. Thank you.

Deputy Roderic O'Gorman

-----for women and girls that will also respond to the recommendations of the recent Citizens' Assembly on Gender Equality.

In 2021, I announced that I would be conducting a review of the Equal Status Act 2000 and the Employment Equality Acts, 1998 to 2011. The review, which is ongoing, is examining the operation of the equality Acts from the perspective of the person taking a claim under its redress mechanisms. It is further examining the degree to which those experiencing discrimination are aware of the legislation and whether there are practical or other obstacles which preclude or deter them from taking an action.

In March 2022, I announced the development of a national equality data strategy by the Central Statistics Office, CSO, and my Department, that would put in place a strategic approach to improving the collection, disaggregation and use of equality data.

My Department continues to ensure children and young people have a voice in their individual and collective everyday lives to our various participation structures and supports. In particular, my Department has a real expertise now in youth participation, bringing the voices of young people to decision-making and policy work. The Department of Education has recently also established a youth participation office within its Department. That is hugely important. There is a very real commitment within my Department to implementing the principles of the sustainable development goals.

Although she is not present, I take this opportunity to thank and give my best wishes to the Cathaoirleach, Deputy Kathleen Funchion, recently elected to represent Ireland South in the European Parliament. Deputy Funchion has always been a model of fairness in chairing this committee. She has advanced the policy work of this committee at all times and tried to keep herself above the partisan fray. She has been an extremely effective committee chair. She had to chair some difficult pre-legislative scrutiny processes, particularly in ensuring survivors and relatives of people who were in mother and baby homes and county home institutions were able to input into some of the legislation that we addressed earlier in the Dáil term. She always did that extremely well and with great fairness. She will represent Ireland very well in the European Parliament and will be missed in Dáil Éireann.

Senator Alice-Mary Higgins

I am delighted to substitute for Senator Ruane who would like to be here herself. I am delighted that the committee is having these sessions on the sustainable development goals. It is really important, given the key role Ireland played in their negotiation, that we also give leadership around their implementation. Again, 2030 is coming very quickly.

I want to pick up on a few of the areas the Minister highlighted and look for a little bit more information in respect of them. One was on the review of the equality Acts. That review was announced in 2021 and marked as a priority, but 2030 is around the corner in the context of the sustainable development goals and the end of this Government term is even sooner. In regard to some of these matters, it is a matter of whether we will have progressed them significantly, even within this term. What is the timeline for the review of the equality Acts? Will it be referred before the summer recess? Will it be published without referral so that there is not adequate time to review? Can we expect a heads of Bill in the autumn?

On the non-disclosure agreements, which is an issue Senator Ruane highlighted and on which there is legislation, it was indicated that might be attached to this process. Is it still attached to the process? On one hand, we are talking about how we can do things better in equality legislation, but one of the things we certainly should be trying to expedite is making sure we stop doing bad things, which is non-disclosure agreements. They are a measure that is damaging to equality. I would like the Minister's thoughts on that.

The prohibition of conversion practices legislation is another key issue in terms of LGBT equality. Is there an update on that? It also was for priority drafting.

I welcome that the national strategy on youth work and relation services is being recognised. This area was absolutely gutted during the recession. Community development services were only really looking at employment. Other equality areas such as youth work, empowering people as citizens, as members of their communities, emotional intelligence and all of those other important issues, were neglected, as the Minister outlined. I am glad that the sector is being recognised. Again, I would like the timeline for that. This is a really important repair job because we actually took a real step backwards for a few years.

Will the database on gender pay gap information be accessible to the public? I note with interest the CSO work on mapping inequalities, which is very welcome. The CSO used to have report on men and women in Ireland, which came out annually, then it moved to biannually and then it only happened every three years. I used to hound the office about that. Where will that fit with this new equality system? How regular will the data be?

On early learning and childcare, it is important that we realise, and the Minister mentioned it in his contribution that it is an equality issue and not solely a labour participation issue. In that regard we may have got something wrong. When we think about sustainable development goals, there is much focus on the "leave no one behind" aspect, which is quoted a lot, but an even more important point within this statement is "furthest behind first". Furthest behind first is actually different from just "leave no one behind". In that regard, unfortunately, the most vulnerable families have been a little bit behind in regard to childcare. I note the local area child poverty action plan pilot scheme and I welcome the fact that the family resource centre programme has more funding. However, the local area child poverty action plan scheme is still a pilot. I am concerned. We have seen so many pilots. Is there going to be a clear timeline to take that to scale, because €400,000 is very little? When we think of "furthest behind first" the child poverty action piece is crucial.

All of this tunnels into what should be, regardless of when the election is, the last budget for the Government. There was a focus on bringing in the new well-being indicators. However, gender- and equality-proofing is meant to have been in place for a number of years. How robust will the gender- and equality-proofing be in the budget coming through in the autumn? Ideally, I would have all the Departments checking their proposals again with the Minister and others. However, will he give an indication of his engagement on gender- and equality-proofing?

Lastly, I was disappointed about the referendum in regard to some aspects of what we worked on on the gender equality committee. However, how on track are the many other recommendations the citizens' assembly made on equality that were in the gender equality action plan that we put forward? Is there a timeline for the UNCRPD optional protocol? That is a great many questions.

Deputy Roderic O'Gorman

I might start with that. In the run-up to the referendum, I announced an interdepartmental group meeting to bring all the relevant Departments together to see what barriers exist and how we can address them. My understanding is that has met twice so far. It will bring its report back to Cabinet for one of our July meetings.

Prior to the referendum campaign, I commissioned legal advice in terms of looking at from a purely legalistic point of view areas where Ireland is non-compliant. That report has come back. The legal barriers were perhaps less significant than some may have understood previously in terms of ratification. We await the report of the interdepartmental group. Members will have heard from myself and indeed from the Taoiseach that we are looking to ratify, certainly by the end of this term of Government. There is a strong determination to do so.

The review of the equality Acts is ongoing. On our side, I have seen an initial draft of what a heads of Bill would look like. Significant work has happened there. The non-disclosure agreement issue is included in that. Officials in my Department liaised very closely with Senator Ruane on that. I hope for referral either just before Cabinet breaks for August or early in the autumn, and hope to make a referral to pre-legislative scrutiny at that stage. We are close to bringing forward a Bill to go to this committee for pre-legislative scrutiny.

There is also ongoing work on conversion practices. We are looking to build something that tries to address conversion practices for both sexuality and gender identity and looks at them in the context of quasi-therapy and the quasi-religious element. It is challenging to find a definition that deals with both of those areas, but also allows entirely legitimate therapies to take place. We have engaged extensively with the Office of the Attorney General and there has been significant back and forth. A lot of work is happening but there is more to go in terms of having a clear definition that can be used, will withstand legal scrutiny and does not impact on legitimate medical and other practices.

I have prioritised investment in youth services since I became Minister. The budget for youth services has grown by 26% since I became Minister. I think it was €61 million per year, which was a small amount, but the services did amazing work with it. It is now €77 million per year as of last year's budget. I met with the national youth organisations yesterday and had a detailed discussion about their priorities for budget 2025. The Senator may be aware that we recently announced a new youth employability scheme, so there is new investment in the sector to support a youth employability initiative in every education training board in the country. We are looking to reach those young people most distant from the labour market. We are using the youth services to even ask them if they know what Intreo is, if they have ever gone to a social welfare office, if they have a CV and, if not, if we should do one. Those are important soft skills to reach out to those young people.

Senator Alice-Mary Higgins

It is important that does not replace the other parts of youth work, which was the mistake in the past. It all became about the job and not the person.

Deputy Roderic O'Gorman

This was something the sector asked me to prioritise because it saw it could reach a set of young people the social welfare office was far away from and with which there was no connection.

On gender pay gap information, the goal is to have the database as a website where people can put in the name of a company and look at its database. I am told that is a relatively complicated website. I had hoped to have that up by now. It is not up yet but we are working to get that done. By the end of this year or early 2025, we will hopefully see that website up and running.

I absolutely agree with the Senator that the provision of early learning and care is an equality issue. It is a gender equality issue, but also one in the context of disadvantage. I feel our Department has embraced the idea of "those furthest behind first". I point to two things. The access and inclusion model, AIM, programme helps children with a disability to access the early childhood care and education, ECCE, scheme for three hours per week of free preschool. We have received investment, so AIM will be extended from September this year. Where children used to be supported for just three hours through an AIM worker, they will now be supported for the full day and outside the 38 hours of the AIM term. Significant investment in AIM does not mean that more children will benefit, but that those children who benefit from the programme will get a greater benefit from September. It would be my hope to be able to start extending AIM further.

The Senator mentioned the local area child poverty initiatives, but I am sure she is aware of the Equal Start initiative I launched two weeks ago, which is a DEIS model for early years. From September, 750 early-years services around the country, covering 32,000 children, will receive additional funding to increase the number of staff they have, so staff can spend more time directly with children, supporting parents or on a range of other issues. Many childcare services are doing this already, but this will give them recognition. It is a €13 million investment in its first year. I hope to grow this initiative. There are a couple of discrete initiatives under it. We are in particular looking to put in place a Traveller and Roma officer in Better Start to specifically encourage reaching out to Traveller and Roma families where we know participation in the ECCE scheme is significantly lower than within the settled population.

I turn to gender and equality proofing of the budget. I agree with the Senator. I am proud that all four budgets passed by this Government have been socially progressive and independently assessed as socially progressive in that the greatest transfers benefited those in the lowest deciles. We will certainly continue to advocate for that significant degree of gender and equality proofing in the decisions we make in our Department and across all of government to ensure these issues are discussed. Meetings now taking place, particularly at Cabinet subcommittees, all have a budget focus. We will be meeting in the Cabinet committee on education, children and disability. Child poverty is one of the issues we will be addressing there. During the Dáil debate on the referendum, I made significant reference to the update we had at that point on the wider gender equality action plan stemming from the recommendations of the citizens' assembly. A lot has been done in the area of early years, domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, DSGBV, and leave. There are other parts where there is more to do. There may be an opportunity to debate where we are on that during the next Seanad term and get into those issues in more detail.

Deputy Jennifer Murnane O'Connor

I apologise to the Minister. I was in the Dail for questions on promised legislation. I welcome the work the Minister has done. I always say there is a lot done, but a lot more to do. There has been a freeze for many years on childcare providers without a guaranteed ability to increase fees from September. They may well have no option to pull out of core funding. I have spoken to a lot of them. Will the Department engage with industry providers to understand how these providers operate in reality? There are huge concerns, and from speaking to them I can see their concerns. Will the Department provide scope for operators to increase fees from September to avoid a potential mass withdrawal from core funding? Will there be commitments on a release of the free fee freeze, recommended by the report, for one year in year 3?

Does the Department support moves toward a pay scale for childcare workers that reflects market rates and attracts graduate colleagues? That is important because these workers are teachers and we need to make sure we appreciate the work they do. They are educators and teachers. Are there plans to have childcare providers included on the curriculum skills list? That is important. Over the past three or four months, I have met with a lot of young families who emigrated. They left between ten and 12 years ago and have now started families and come home, because they want to come home to rear their families and be with their families for support. They have mortgages and good jobs because they are qualified, but the biggest issue is they cannot get crèche places. They cannot get a childcare space or get their child into a crèche. That is one of the biggest issues I see facing us. I know from speaking with the different crèche owners and providers that they have waiting lists. There are people waiting a year or more.

I compliment all involved in the sector. We are so lucky to have the childcare providers we have and the excellent service they give. However, the biggest issue is that people cannot get a place. We have qualified childcare workers who do an excellent job and have various qualifications - there are different levels with different numbers - but it is causing huge concern for families that they cannot get a place. I know families who are travelling one hour to get a place in a crèche. That is one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening because there is unfortunately no childcare place locally. Does the Minister see this in all the good work he has done?

The work the Minister has done has made huge changes. However, there is still a huge issue within the system. What way does the Minister see this going forward from September? How can we help? What can we do to make sure that we have no family that needs a place in a crèche that cannot get one? That is unacceptable. These are people who go to work every day. They are now asking neighbours, family, friends, grannies, grandads or parents to mind their child because they cannot get their child in anywhere.

I will come back to the Minister with more in a second.

Deputy Roderic O'Gorman

I thank the Deputy for her contribution. This is an issue she has championed over the past number of years. I remember when I started in this role four years ago, we would have said the challenges were that parents are paying too much, staff are not paid enough and providers are not making a significant income from their work. Those were the big three challenges and we have done a huge amount there. In September of this year we will have cut fees for parents by 50%. Two pay agreements have been reached for childcare professionals – another one was agreed just a couple of weeks ago now. There had never been set statutory rates of pay for childcare professionals before. We have achieved two and we have increased it. We did that by using core funding to give the services significantly more money. We have done a lot to address those three challenges. They are not solved, but they are not the issues the Deputy is hearing at the doors.

We have a new challenge now, and that is capacity. One of the reasons is that we have made childcare more affordable for parents, so parents want to take it up. It is a problem caused by our successes elsewhere. Capacity is a central issue. In the next number of weeks, I will be announcing a new capital funding scheme. This is the availability of capital. Some €30 million next year can be drawn down, hopefully from very early in 2025, to support either community or private services to expand or, particularly for community services, to build completely new locations or buy locations. That will be helpful in terms of a significant new scale of investment. Obviously, it will be for the next Government to continue to ramp that up as we go along, but we will have started that work.

With regard to other pieces of work, my Department has set up a forward planning unit for early years. The Deputy knows there is one of those in the Department of Education. Schools are entirely State-funded, so the Department of Education has a bit more directive power there. However, we see the importance in my Department saying, for example, there is a real challenge in Carlow town or Blanchardstown village, talking to the local authority and asking how it will meet that challenge. Will it allow planning permission for more childcare facilities in that area? That is an important step.

Another important step is the Department of Education recently printed its new guidelines for the use of school buildings out of hours. They are much more positive, particularly towards of the use of school buildings for after school. It frustrates me - and I know it frustrates parents - to see a school empty from 3.30 p.m. until 6 p.m., when one of the rooms at least could be used by a school-aged childcare provider.

Finally, my Department is doing work with the Department of housing on planning regulations. There are requirements, particularly perhaps of some of the larger developments around Carlow, where if there are more than 75 units, a crèche is meant to be provided under the regulations, and often that does not happen, it is not built at the same time or it is half built and left there as a shell. We are making sure we convert those and make the planning regulations work to deliver new childcare facilities. As we know, under Housing for All, there will be thousands of units built all over the country in the next number of years. There should be crèches coming with those and we have to make sure those crèches are delivered – that the actual buildings are delivered.

Regarding the wider issues of core funding, remember, if we raise the fee freeze, that is an increase in costs for parents. We have to remember what the debate is. It is not a universally good thing. We have put in significant amounts of money into core funding. When I first announced core funding in 2022, it was €206 million. This year coming, €331 million will go to childcare services. That is a 15% increase on the budget last year. The budget last year was €287 million and it will be €331 million. That is a big increase going to services. Inflation this year will be 2% and they are seeing a 15% increase. That is why I am reluctant to announce any massive removal of the fee freeze. While providers are not allowed to increase their fees, we are giving them more money. The State is giving them more core funding. All providers are getting more core funding this year – every single one. We will be doing a bit of work to make sure the smallest services get a bigger increase, which is important.

Deputy Jennifer Murnane O'Connor

That is the biggest issue I am facing. It is the smaller providers. As they tell me, it is the paperwork. It is the hours and hours of work.

Deputy Roderic O'Gorman

I will come back to the paperwork in a moment. In terms of more money, core funding is delivering very significantly from September of this year. Probably next week we will be announcing the allocations for core funding in year 3.

I will not say we will get rid of the fee freeze, because it is so important. I am aware there are a couple of services whose fees were last set in the mid-2010s, for example, in 2011, 2015 or 2016. I can understand that they may be far out of whack with a service that set its fees in 2021 just before the fee freeze came in. We are looking at that. I do not have the full answer for the Deputy today, but we are looking at that. It has to be the outliers. It cannot be a general everyone just starts to up their fees again, because then all the great savings that parents have seen will be wiped away.

Deputy Jennifer Murnane O'Connor

I understand.

Deputy Roderic O'Gorman

There is much administration there. Earlier this year, I announced an overview of the administrative burden, and that is taking place. We are having an action plan to set out where there is duplication, where there is administration burden and where we can remove that. We have been able to do a few already, even in terms of this year’s contracts. There used to be different sets of fee levels for the different schemes. They have now all been amalgamated into one fee list. What a provider might have had to do three times previously just has to be done once now. We are doing simple stuff such as that to start with. Later on, some will take new IT systems. Rather than filling in many forms, you will just go into the one form. We have an action plan that will set out how we reduce the administrative burden on providers. I am very aware of that and that is what I have done to respond to it.

Deputy Jennifer Murnane O'Connor

That is important. Regarding communication with the different providers, does the Minister feel they are well informed by the Department? I am firm believer in communication and information. It is all providers, but in my own area of County Carlow, there are many small providers and they are under much more pressure. I have been speaking to many of them this week again. Does the Minister feel there needs to be more information and communication coming from the Department to them? It was brought to my attention and I wonder whether the Minister could look at that.

Deputy Roderic O'Gorman

Before I was here, I was meeting with Childminding Ireland to talk to it about the childminding regulation, which some childminders have been concerned about.

Deputy Jennifer Murnane O'Connor

It is a big thing.

Deputy Roderic O'Gorman

We had a good, useful discussion. I meet with the entire sector in the Early Years Forum. That has representatives of the big chains, the mediums-size groups, the small-size groups, parents and educators. It is an effective location. I meet with it three or four times a year. I also regularly meet with many of the individual organisations, both formally and informally, when I am at events. Our Department provides a lot of communications. Sometimes there is a disagreement. Perhaps sometimes we put out too much and perhaps we need to cut it down a little bit.

Deputy Jennifer Murnane O'Connor

Make it simpler.

Deputy Roderic O'Gorman

We are always trying to communicate and provide information about what we are doing.

There absolutely continues to be challenges in early years. The Deputy will recall that just before the last general election when we were all elected, there was a massive march of childcare professionals, providers and parents all very angry about the three issues I outlined at the start. We have made good progress on all three. They are not solved, but we made good progress on all three. We now have new challenges. Capacity is one, and I set out some of the matters we are addressing on capacity here.

Deputy Jennifer Murnane O'Connor

The Minister has. I thank him.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

I have a few questions. We now have a child poverty unit within the Department of an Taoiseach. If we are working to eliminate child poverty, I ask about the interaction between the Minister’s Department and it. Is it working? Is it duplication? Are we seeing new things come from that?

In his opening, the Minister mentioned the challenge of people enforcing their rights, vindicating their equality rights and the challenge of a lack of information and not necessarily knowing their rights. I see a key role in helping protect people to vindicate their equality rights, particularly in the workplace, in trade unions.

Is the Minister engaging with them as a key stakeholder? It is also worth mentioning that a key block to vindicating peoples' rights - equality rights or others - is legal costs. I appreciate the Minister is not responsible for them so I will not dig into that much further. However, I would certainly encourage the Minister to address the issue of legal costs and the lack of civil legal aid, with the Minister for Justice.

The committee has produced a very significant report on the national strategy on youth work and related services, which I know the Minister has read so I do not need to question him on it. However, we sought to highlight them as an important part of equality and anti-poverty strategies and the role that youth work plays. When are we likely to see the national youth work strategy being published?

Deputy Roderic O'Gorman

We hope to get this done before the end of the summer. A lot of work has been done on it, so we are hoping to get it published in July or August. Youth work is very much a focus for us. I have been able to significantly increase the budget, though when I met with national youth organisations yesterday they set a high bar for budget 2025. The Leas-Chathaoirleach is right in terms of its ability to impact the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children and young people. We want to meet their needs while at the same time also making youth work an option for all young people. We think that quality youth work can benefit all young people, be they from a disadvantaged background or not. Trying to get those two goals is always a challenge but it is one we are working on.

One of the things we spoke about yesterday was recruitment and retention of youth workers in youth services. Setting out clear career pathways for youth workers is particularly important and valuable. I take the point on legal costs. This is something on which I can engage with the Minister for Justice, Deputy McEntee. I have a strong engagement with the trade unions on an individualised basis in terms of their engagement in early years and the pay agreements and the employment regulation order. I spoke at SIPTU's early years union AGM about two months ago. I had a really good meeting there and we discussed what we had been able to do. There is a strong recognition within the organisation of the improvements and of the employment regulation order being a huge step forward in terms of better pay for childcare professionals, albeit while recognising that they are still underpaid and that there is still more work to be done in the area.

I also engaged with the unions in terms of the Labour Employer Economic Forum, LEEF, subgroup that covers my Department, early years and much of the equality legislation. The work-life balance directive and the gender pay gap were discussed with the unions and employer representatives. Representatives from the Irish Business and Employers Confederation, IBEC, and the Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association, ISME, attended. We had good engagements with them. I recognise the importance of the trade union movement for the rights of workers and for the protection of wider rights as well.

The child poverty unit in the Department of the Taoiseach is working really well. It has allowed for a greater focus on the issue of child poverty in budget 2024. Our big initiative on child poverty was the introduction of the equal start programme which will be rolled out from September. Another important element was the broadening of the school meals programme. If we are to have a meaningful impact on child poverty then we have to be talking about the issue before the budget. At our next meeting of the Cabinet committee on education, children and disability, we have an item on child poverty because it is now that Departments are really focusing on what their asks are for the Estimates process. Having that meeting at which child poverty is an item is important. I can say what I am thinking of doing and all the relevant Ministers will be in the room at the same time. We will probably not be able to do all our initiatives but it allows us to focus on what elements of child poverty we want to prioritise this year.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

I thank the Minister. Before we move on, I would like to underline that the committee would appreciate the chance to engage in a full pre-legislative scrutiny of the equality legislation. There are very tight timelines on that now. Given that we are entering into a period of recess, the timelines do not keep running. I would stress the importance of this committee of having the full time - even if we have to go over the eight-weeks' timeline - to allow for full and proper pre-legislative scrutiny and engagement in that by the committee.

If we do have challenges in relation to workers' knowledge of their rights under the equality legislation, perhaps an information campaign is needed. This could be funded by the Department in conjunction with the trade unions. A joint project between the two could be very useful. Unless the Minister wants to respond to those points we can finish the meeting.

Deputy Roderic O'Gorman

I thank the Leas-Chathaoirleach.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

In that case, I propose to publish the opening statement on the Oireachtas website. Is that agreed? Agreed. I thank the Minister and his officials for appearing before the committee and updating the members on the progression of the sustainable development goals. The committee now stands adjourned until Tuesday, 2 July.

The joint committee adjourned at 4.06 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Tuesday, 2 July 2024.