I thank the Acting Chairman for her kind welcome. It is great to be present today to address the select committee and present an outline of the financial allocations included in the 2008 Revised Estimates for public services: Vote 41 — Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, OMCYA. The total estimate of the funding required in the year ending 31 December 2008 for the provision of certain services, including miscellaneous grants, in respect of the OMCYA under Vote 41 is €675.394 million. This consists of €573.830 million in current funding and €101.564 million in capital funding. In the time available to present the Estimates to the committee, I propose to outline details of the 2008 resource allocations across the individual subheads in the Vote.
The committee might note that the early child care payment was introduced with effect from 1 April 2006. This payment is made quarterly in arrears to parents of eligible children under the age of six. Approximately 1.2 million payments were made in 2007, totalling almost €418 million. The early child care supplement was increased by 10% in budget 2008 and represents a payment of €1,100 in a calendar year to parents of eligible children. A sum of €506 million has been provided under subhead A to support the payments in 2008. Eligibility for payment is determined by the Department of Social and Family Affairs on the same basis as entitlement to child benefit and that Department also administers the payments on behalf of the OMCYA.
The national child care investment programme was announced in budget 2006 as a successor programme to the equal opportunities child care programme, EOCP. Up to the end of 2007, almost 40,000 new child care places were delivered under the EOCP and more than 26,500 existing child care places were supported. Over 3,000 child care staff were also supported under the programme. The national child care investment programme is intended to build on the success of the EOCP through a proactive approach to the development of quality child care, facilitated by the city and county child care committees and grounded in the identification of local needs. The main objective of the programme is the creation of an additional 50,000 new child care places, of which 20% will be for the three to four year age group and 10% for after-school care.
The national child care investment programme is wholly Exchequer funded. The total allocation to the programme is €575 million over five years, of which €358 million is in respect of capital expenditure and €217 million for current expenditure. Up to the end of December 2007, capital grants totalling €134 million have been approved to child care providers under the investment programme. Capital grants totalling a further €39 million were approved in January 2008. These approvals are expected to lead to the creation of more than 23,000 new child care places, as well as supporting more than 5,500 existing places to further develop quality child care provision. In addition, the programme continues to support the city and county child care committees and the national voluntary child care organisations as part of its broad approach to developing the infrastructure for child care.
Under the EOCP, a staffing grant was available to community organisations to allow them to operate reduced fees for disadvantaged parents. On the closure of this programme, the Government decided to continue to support community child care services to provide affordable child care to disadvantaged parents. Accordingly, the community child care subvention scheme was introduced with effect from January 2008 under the national child care investment programme. The subvention scheme has been allocated €154.2 million over the next three years. Under the new scheme it will be possible to ensure that the level of grant aid for which individual services qualify will reflect the actual level of services they provide, and the profile of the parents benefiting from the service. The subvention received by the service will, in turn, be reflected in the reduced fees for parents who qualify as disadvantaged under the scheme. Services which were in receipt of staffing grants under the EOCP and entered the new scheme will continue to be funded at their current levels until July 2008, as a transitional measure, and during the period 2008-10 they will also qualify for phased reduction of their previous level of support funding.
The community child care subvention scheme provides an effective framework for the continued targeting of additional resources towards disadvantaged parents and their children, as well as giving sufficient time and support to existing services to adapt to the new arrangements.
Subhead C of the Vote provides for the prevention and early intervention programme for children for which an allocation of €3 million has been made this year. This programme, which was initially announced in 2006, is primarily aimed at promoting better outcomes for children through innovation and improved planning, integration and delivery of services. The programme uses international evidence of what works to support the activities chosen. This requires a range of statutory and non-statutory agencies, working across sectors, to collaborate in both service design and inter-agency delivery.
The programme is being managed by my office and the administration of funds is overseen by it. It will run for a five-year period with a fund amounting to €36 million in total, of which €18 million is being provided by the Government and the balance by Atlantic Philanthropies. The Government agreed that the best use of this funding would be to focus initially on a small number of projects in severely disadvantaged areas and accordingly, the funds have been committed to projects in Ballymun, west Tallaght and Darndale-Belcamp, based on plans drawn up over a two-year period by local statutory and community bodies.
The development and commissioning of an appropriate evaluation framework is nearing completion with input from an international panel of experts, the Office of the Minister of State with responsibility for children and youth affairs, and Atlantic Philanthropies. All three projects have commenced work and the recruitment of core staff is complete. The priorities for 2008 include the finalisation of service design and evaluation frameworks, the commencement of a phased roll-out of interventions and the commencement of evaluation.
Subhead D provides for the costs associated with the national longitudinal study of children in Ireland and a range of other programmed activities by my office to support the implementation of the three goals of the national children's strategy, Our Children — Their Lives. The funding provision for 2008 amounts to €8.535 million and I propose to highlight for the committee the key areas for which the most significant amounts of funding are available in 2008.
My office is fully committed to implementing goal 1 of the strategy, which states that "children will have a voice in matters which affect them, and their views will be given due weight in accordance with their age and maturity". This is being done through a strategy to develop participation structures and promote the voice of children and young people by supporting their participation in Dáil na nÓg, Comhairle na nÓg, the Children and Young People's Forum, and other consultative and participative initiatives. A sum of €1.165 million is being made available for these purposes in 2008 from subhead D.
The second goal of the national children's strategy provides that "children's lives will be better understood; their lives will benefit from evaluation, research and information on their needs, rights and the effectiveness of services". The aim of this goal is to achieve a better understanding of how children grow up in Ireland, including both their individual and shared needs. To advance this goal, my office has set up a children's research programme which encompasses a number of different actions including a commissioned research programme, incorporating Growing up in Ireland: the National Longitudinal Study of Children and other commissioned research studies; a capacity-building research programme based on the award of Masters, PhD and research placement scholarships within my office; and a dissemination of research and information programme, most notably through the State of the Nation's Children report and the development of the national children's data strategy. A sum of €5.904 million is being made available in 2008 to support these activities.
The report Growing up in Ireland: the National Longitudinal Study of Children in Ireland is one of the most important pieces of research ever undertaken regarding children's lives. The aim of the National Longitudinal Study of Children in Ireland is "to study the factors which contribute to or undermine the well-being of children in contemporary Irish families and, through this, contribute to the setting of effective and responsive policies relating to children and to the design of services for children and their families". This study will monitor the development of 18,000 children — an infant cohort of 10,000 and a nine-year-old cohort of 8,000 children — yielding important information about each significant transition throughout their young lives.
The contract to undertake the first phase of this study, which covers the period 2006 to 2012, was awarded in April 2006 to a research consortium led by the Economic and Social Research Institute and Trinity College, Dublin. Preparatory work required to conduct the various elements of the study has been ongoing since 2006. The first phase of fieldwork for the nine-year cohort is expected to be completed by the end of May 2008 and it is envisaged that subject to the necessary ethics approval, fieldwork for the infant cohort will commence in September 2008. Once fieldwork is completed a number of research reports on the findings will be developed and published.
The third goal three of the national children's strategy provides that "children will receive quality supports and services to promote all aspects of their development". My office supports this goal through a range of actions, including the development of evidence-based outcomes, focused planning capacity, the implementation of the national play and recreation policies, supporting the work of the National Children's Advisory Council and the National Children's Strategy Implementation Group and the development of children's services committees.
A sum of €250,000 is being made available to support the implementation of the national play and recreation policies. In building on the success of the national play policy, which was instrumental in improving the national play infrastructure for children in Ireland, Teenspace — a National Recreation Policy for Young People was launched by my predecessor last September. The policy provides a strategic framework for the promotion of positive recreational opportunities aimed principally at young people aged 12 to 18 years.
The launch of the policy highlighted the Government's commitment to the development of youth cafés. There are already a number of youth cafés in operation around the country. Funding for these existing initiatives is provided through a number of bodies including local city and county councils and the HSE. The Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs also operates a number of relevant funding programmes aimed at supporting community development, locally-based community and voluntary groups, as well as programmes aimed specifically at supporting projects for disadvantaged youth.
At this stage, the focus is to bring better coherence to the approach taken to date, retaining the strong inter-agency element and identifying an appropriate model for youth cafés for future development. Since September, my office has undertaken a small survey of some of the existing cafés looking at mission objectives, management and organisation, service levels and the role of young people.
The National Children's Advisory Council is also preparing advice on the development of a youth café model and research work has been commissioned by the council in this regard. It is anticipated that the council will be in a position to report on this matter shortly. This work will guide the Government in ensuring that funding is targeted and co-ordinated most effectively on a model or models of youth cafés which meet the needs identified by young people themselves.
Discussions are underway with relevant Departments regarding a youth café programme and appropriate funding mechanisms. Consideration is being given to which agency could best lead the programme and how to ensure any funding which might be made available augments, without displacing, the existing inter-agency resources.
The National Children's Strategy Implementation Group was established in late 2006 with representatives drawn from relevant Departments, the HSE, local authorities, the education sector and other key relevant agencies. The group agreed that four children service's committees, CSCs, should be established in the county development board areas of Dublin city, south Dublin, Limerick and Donegal, with the objective of developing county level action plans for children's services. These four will lead on the development of a prototype structure and methodology for collaboration of service delivery, which could be used across all county development boards.
Support needs for the CSCs were identified and appropriate expertise commissioned. This assistance is ongoing at individual CSC level. A sum of €550,000 is being made available to support the development of the children's services committees in 2008. Their objective is to develop strong cross-agency working relationships, secure support for the joint implementation of policies and initiatives requiring inter-agency action, and maximise integration of service delivery at local level.
The National Children's Advisory Council has a specific role in monitoring the implementation of the national children's strategy. A new approach to monitoring the implementation of the strategy was agreed by the National Children's Advisory Council in late 2007 to support a greater focus on on-the-ground implementation and, in particular, the integration of services. Significant issues for key Departments were identified and bilateral meetings of the council, with representatives from the appropriate Department in attendance, to discuss progress and challenges have commenced.
By the end of the lifetime of the council in May 2008, the Departments of Education and Science, Social and Family Affairs, and Justice, Equality and Law Reform will have had bilateral sessions with the council. A sum of €100,000 is being made available to support the work of the council in 2008.
A sum of €3 million has been allocated under subhead E to support costs in connection with the holding of a constitutional referendum on children's rights in 2008. The Twenty-Eighth Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2007 was published in February 2007 and contained the Government's proposal to amend the Constitution in relation to children. The programme for Government of June 2007 committed to deepening consensus on the issue. To this end, the Joint Committee on the Constitutional Amendment on Children was established, in November 2007, to report back within four months on the proposals set out in the Bill. However, the work of the committee progressed to include a legal audit and analysis of over 144 submissions. Given the complexity and sensitivity of the issues raised by the Twenty-Eighth Amendment to the Constitution Bill 2007, the committee received Dáil and Seanad approval for an extension of its timeframe to 30 November 2008. The committee is now progressing its work and the Government awaits the outcome of its deliberations before proceeding further with this issue.
Subhead F includes the sum of €20.283 million in appropriations-in-aid for the Vote in 2008. This is made up of €17.283 million in EU receipts, which stem from the operation of the Equal Opportunities Childcare Programme 2000-2006 that was part funded by the EU. The programme ended in December 2007 and the EU contribution is repaid in arrears by the EU.
It also includes an additional €3 million that has been provided under subhead C from the Dormant Accounts Fund to support the early intervention programme for children and a corresponding appropriation-in-aid is recorded in subhead E in accordance with the provisions of the Dormant Accounts Acts 2001 and 2005.
The establishment of the Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs clearly demonstrates the Government's commitment to improving outcomes for children and young people. In my capacity as Minister of State with responsibility for children and youth affairs, I am particularly pleased to represent the interests of children and young people at the Cabinet table and to be in a position to develop and deliver policies and programmes on their behalf through the substantial Exchequer resources being made available in the Vote for my office in 2008.
I welcome any questions members might wish to raise on the funding provisions in the Vote.