Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 11 November 2014
328. Deputy John Lyons asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs his views on the delays and technical problems with the new programme implementation platform computer system for registering children for the early childhood care and education scheme; and his views on specific problems (details supplied) which have been experienced by childcare professionals with the new system. [43066/14]
View answerMy Department administers five childcare funding programmes: the universal free preschool year, known as the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE), and four targeted programmes, the Community Childcare Subvention (CCS) and three Training and Employment Childcare Programmes, Childcare Education and Training Programme (CETS); Community Employment Childcare (CEC) and Afterschool Childcare Programme (ASCC) which provide childcare supports to eligible parents returning to work or to education. These programmes developed on an ad hoc basis and were introduced at different times but in general very quickly. My Department has therefore been running these programmes without a strong ICT infrastructure. This means that systems are not efficient and in particular that payments can be slow to respond to changing circumstances. It also means that there is limited access to information from the programmes. It has always been the Department's intention to move to an integrated approach to support the programmes, and after considerable analysis work, my Department and Pobal are in the process of implementing a new management platform for the early years programmes – called the Programmes Implementation Platform (PIP). PIP is an online system which will streamline the administrative processes across childcare funding programmes.
The objectives of PIP are to reduce paperwork and duplication of effort and to simplify administration to enhance the service experience of childcare service providers and the other stakeholders involved; City/County Childcare Committees, Pobal and DCYA. This new development will provide a more comprehensive, integrated set of management processes, more efficient work practices, greater visibility and control of funds and commitments and will substantially improve the capacity of the Department, City and County Childcare Committees and services on the ground to dynamically manage service by service and case by case approvals and changes in each of the programmes.
PIP is being rolled out incrementally. The launch of the first stage of PIP, ‘Child Registrations’, began on the 6 October 2014. To date, childcare service providers have registered over 60,000 children for the ECCE Programme and the local City/County Childcare Committees have registered over 3,500 children for the various TEC Programmes.
The introduction of new ICT infrastructure tends to result in issues emerging and PIP has been no exception. Technical issues, such as those specifically detailed by the Deputy, did result in service providers experiencing delays in registering children on the system. On 15 October, while over 30,000 children had already been registered on the system for the ECCE Programme, my Department took the decision to issue a further advance payment to service providers to allow for those service providers who had experienced delays or difficulties to complete their registrations. While acknowledging the inconvenience for service providers not receiving accurate balancing payments as early as possible, the decision was taken to ensure that all service providers were to receive sufficient advance funding to honour any financial commitments, rather than to delay all payments until the technical glitches on PIP were resolved.
Three of the issues raised by the Deputy to the PPSN checker, which is the responsibility of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. The introduction of immediate checking of the validity of PPS Numbers is a key element of the improvements introduced by PIP, as it will mean instantaneous validity checks. This replaces the previous unwieldy and long process that involved my Department sending batches of PPS numbers to the Department of Social Protection for checking. This was a major cause of delays in validating eligibility and therefore payments. On the PIP Child Registration Form, during the first few weeks of the launch a number issues arose with the PPSN Checker. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform speedily addressed issues as they emerged and service providers continued to get updates on the PIP Homepage, which is hosted on the Pobal website (www.pobal.ie ), on how to manage these issues while registering.
I can assure the Deputy that both my Department and Pobal are working together to address issues as PIP develops, and I am confident that once the system is fully operational the Childcare ‘Programmes Implementation Platform’ will prove to be extremely beneficial and efficient for all users for years to come and in particular will significantly improve the situation for service providers.
