Denis Naughten
Question:27. Deputy Denis Naughten asked the Minister for Children, Disability, Equality and Integration the timeline for the establishment of childcare Ireland; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [29743/20]
View answerTuesday, 20 October 2020
Questions (27, 60)
Denis Naughten
Question:60. Deputy Denis Naughten asked the Minister for Children, Disability, Equality and Integration the role and function of childcare Ireland; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [29744/20]
View answerOral answers (11 contributions)
Staff packing baby wipes on supermarket shelves can earn more than a staff member using those very same wipes who is responsible for the care of a baby and two other babies. That is fundamentally wrong. We need to ensure there are proper pay scales put in place for those providing vital childcare services across this country.
I propose to take Questions Nos. 27 and 60 together.
I agree with what the Deputy said. His questions asked about the establishment of childcare Ireland. It is a commitment in the programme for Government. It involves ensuring that childcare Ireland will expand high-quality early learning and care in school-age childcare and that we have best practice and innovation in community and private settings, develop career paths for early learning and care and school-age childcare and expand Síolta, which is the early years curriculum.
Before we set up any new agency, I want to undertake an operational review of the bodies working in the area, something that was called for under First 5, the whole-of-government strategy for babies, young children and their families. This review is now under way. Its objective is to ensure the operating system is fit for purpose and to implement departmental childcare policy related to quality, affordability and accessibility to the scale and standards required in an evolving and expanding sector.
Early learning and care in the school-age childcare sector has grown substantially over the past ten years. The review of the operating model will make recommendations to better support high-quality, accessible and affordable early learning and care and school-age childcare services for families and children and make sure the administration of all of these programmes is undertaken in an effective way. This new operating system will be designed to be transparent. There will be good standards of governance, and it will be accountable and will provide value to the Exchequer.
We want to be able to link what we are doing in my Department with what is happening in other Departments and agencies. The first meeting of the oversight group undertaking the review took place on 16 October and the review will conclude in May 2021. It will be led by my Department, in collaboration with other Departments. It wants to secure an outside consultant by tender before Christmas to assist in some of the research. It is important that we base the assumptions and any changes we undertake on properly completed research. The research will examine the variety of options for the administrative infrastructure of childcare in this country.
That work feeds into two other pieces of work which are relevant to the Deputy's question on wages in the childcare sector. I briefly mentioned the workforce planning model in response to Deputy Paul Murphy. It is all about ensuring that there is a long-term and viable career for childcare professionals, many of whom are undertaking lengthy training and education at levels 7 and 8 before leaving the sector after two or three years because wages are so low. There is a retention problem. We know that where childcare workers are leaving and staff are not retained, the educational outcomes for children they look after are broken because the children do not have continuity of care with the childcare professional they know.
The funding model is the other element. We are putting a significant amount of money, some €638 million, into the system. We have to be sure that funding is going to the right areas and that staff have good wages, providers are sustainable and parents' out-of-pocket costs are met. Sometimes people give out about research and say it pushes back change by another year but, as I said to Deputy Whitmore, too often when it comes to childcare we just slap something down because it is necessary. We have had this approach for ten years. It is time to take a bigger step and ask how we are going to develop this sector in the long term. Once the three pieces of research to be undertaken next year are complete, we can use that information to make significant decisions.
On research, my colleague, the former Minister, Katherine Zappone, commissioned the consultancy, Crowe, to complete an independent review of the costs of providing childcare in the early years services in Ireland. The review was published by the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, this week. The former Minister commissioned that work because of staff turnover. As the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, said, this has a significant impact on continuity of service but also on individual children who build up relationships with childcare workers.
The sector lacks a sick pay system. At the same time, there are high costs for parents. One of the issues highlighted in the Crowe report published by the Minister is that there is evidence of higher costs for a higher quality of service, whereby staff who are more highly trained are providing a higher quality of service. Many of those staff are leaving the sector and are moving into much lower grade jobs that pay far better.
Did Deputy Whitmore wish to contribute?
Deputy Naughten is right. That is why we need the workforce planning model to make sure there is no disincentive to staff training and continuing their education in order that they can move to higher grades and provide a high standard of care to children. We need to ensure we support providers in paying staff who are achieving high levels of training. My Department has the ECCE scheme in place under which the provider gets a higher capitation rate when the ECCE room is led by someone with a level 7 qualification or higher. There are still problems in the sector. I absolutely accept that.
Deputy Funchion asked for the Crowe report to be published for a long time. The information on the unit cost is one piece of research that is valuable. My predecessor undertook that review. We have used that research in many arguments to secure the exemption for the employment wage subsidy scheme. It is already paying dividends to the sector.
In the Minister's comments following the publication of the report, he said the findings on unit cost provided some confidence in our current levels of subvention. He then offered the caveat that he was acutely aware that the unit cost is based on pay rates in the sector, which are unacceptably low. The difficulty is that if one focuses on that, as the Minister did in his press statement, it will be turned back on him by Merrion Street as a justification for not increasing the subsidy. The commitment in the programme for Government on childcare Ireland is to develop career paths for childcare staff. That is imperative. It cannot be done based on the terms and conditions under which staff currently work.
This is why we have this range of research which is being undertaken now. The funding model research is particularly important because it is looking at what happens in other European countries and how we can use State investment to target and reward providers and specifically reward staff who have higher levels of qualifications. This is essential. We are not just looking at the unit costs from the Crowe review in isolation. We are looking at that as one measure of unit cost but we are also looking at how we can target State spending to get good outcomes, both in terms of good wages for staff and in ensuring providers are sustainable, there is continued investment in the wider sector and childcare professionals are adequately resourced for the difficult and important work they do.
I have no difficulty with the Minister carrying out reviews. It is important that he does so. Another recommendation in the programme for Government is that the Government will progress a living wage over its term. We should use the childcare staff and sector as a pilot to roll out the living wage across the country. Regardless of what reports are produced, we all agree - the Minister agreed with me - that the current wages and terms of conditions of staff are completely unacceptable. No matter what recommendations come out of these reviews, we all accept that the wages staff get need to be increased. Let us start with the living wage and pilot it within the childcare sector. No other sector of society would disagree with that because it would unlock employment for many thousands of women across the country.
I fully agree with the Deputy on the wages and conditions in the sector. I made the point about one particular condition, namely, sick pay, which has been highlighted to me by both SIPTU and ICTU. Now that the Government is looking at a national solution to sick pay, which is very welcome, I will ensure that this solution addresses the childcare sector as well.
I also fully agree with the Deputy on wages. The purpose of the review is to ensure that the substantial amount of money we are investing in childcare finds its way to childcare workers. It is not solely a matter of additional money but also one of ensuring we have the mechanisms to reach childcare professionals. Everybody accepts that these mechanisms have not worked successfully thus far. The funding model work currently under way is very important for this reason.
The Minister’s own research published earlier this week shows that 70% of childcare costs are directly associated with wages. If we can take the wages aspect out of childcare subvention, we can look at whatever else the funding is being spent on to see if it is being delivered properly. We all accept that the current rates of pay are unacceptably low and that childcare workers need to be paid for the quality of service and education they provide and for the qualifications they have received. Let us ring-fence that and use it as a pilot for the living wage which could then be replicated across other sectors, thereby allowing women throughout the economy to return to the workforce, participate in it and access education with affordable childcare.
The Deputy is correct that wages account for 70% of costs on average. The wage subsidy scheme is meeting 82% of staff costs in this emergency. In this way, we have acted to ensure that even as numbers in childcare fall, as parents lose their jobs or work at home and no longer need childcare services as much or are just nervous about the current situation, we are continuing to support childcare providers across the country with this very significant package. We are doing that in the immediate term until 31 January on the new rates and also on an ongoing basis until 31 March 2021 to keep the sector sustainable.