Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 14 February 2017
44. Deputy Anne Rabbitte asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs her views on reports that Ireland's child care sector is becoming financially unviable, particularly with regard to working conditions and pay for staff; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [7353/17]
Amharc ar fhreagraWhat are the Minister's views on the report that Ireland's child care sector is becoming financially unviable, particularly with regard to the working conditions and pay for staff? She has covered some of it already, but I ask her to expand on what she said in reply to Deputy Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire.
Staff in the child care sector have a critical role to play in delivering high-quality child care services and deserve to be valued and respected for the important role they play with children. Because child care costs for parents in Ireland are among the highest in the OECD, we need to address the issues of affordability and quality at the same time. The Department is not an employer of child care workers, but it is a significant funder of child care services. I am very conscious that there is an issue with the pay and conditions of workers in the sector and the Department is engaging with the early years sector to explore how it can be addressed in the short, medium and long term.
The programme for Government commits to carrying out an independent review of the cost of providing quality child care, which probably has more to do with what will happen in the medium term. This commitment aligns closely with work on the design and development of a new single affordable child care scheme and we are progressing this work in that context. The review will feed into future policy development, including on levels of payments to services.
I am pleased that the previous two budgets delivered a 35% increase each year in funding for child care services. We need to continue to invest and I will argue for more resources in 2018. To go some way towards addressing cost pressures faced by providers in the sector, I have secured €10 million to enable them to be paid for non-contact time, when they will have no children present and will be able to pay staff to concentrate on the administrative workload. The services can decide how to use the payment when it is received. That is to happen in the short term.
I thank the Minister. It is welcome that she has said she will argue for more funds. All of the child care providers and staff watching will be delighted to hear this. Representatives of Early Childhood Ireland, ECI, appeared before the Joint Committee on Children and Youth Affairs at its most recent meeting, as did Ms Marion Quinn from the Association of Childhood Professionals, ACP, and representatives of the city and county child care committees. ECI and the ACP stated they would have preferred if the review had been carried out before we went down the route of the affordable child care scheme. As someone who is committed and true to her word, the Minister has delivered on the objective of providing affordable child care, but people are still looking for the findings of the review. What exactly is its status? When can we expect to hear the results? Will they feed into the Minister's budgetary recommendations later this year?
I will take the Deputy's last question, on whether it would feed into the negotiations for budget 2018. The answer is "Absolutely". I am happy to come back with an exact, or almost exact, deadline for when we expect to have it but I need to check with officials first. The terms of the review are being worked on. I appreciate that the child care sector will be looking for them but its own research will feed into the review and is guiding us now in the decisions we make on how to use the money I got in budget 2017.
We anticipate that this will come and will give us more evidence than we have now to enable us to have strong negotiations for budget 2018.
I compliment the child care providers of programmes like the ECCE and the ACP because they feed into the picture with valuable information. There are concerns among community providers and private providers over the sums provided by Early Childhood Ireland. They show that private providers have to pay commercial rates and this makes them different from community providers, who in turn are concerned over wages. Up to the end of last year they had CE workers to help with their ratios. We talk about universal care and affordability but different providers are quite diverse in their concerns. One has concerns over the ECCE worker and the other over commercial rates.
I am very aware of those issues, which the organisations in question have also brought to my attention. There is a diversity of cost bases, depending on where they are located, and we must address these and take them into account in our review of costs. The review will provide us with better evidence than we have at the moment. That will enable us to make the case more strongly for increased resources and to take account of the diversity in the cost of providing services.
I agree that concerns around the pay and conditions of the child care workforce are real, and evidence for these is backed up by the reported difficulties. These concerns have been discussed in the early years forum, where many organisations have raised them. I am delighted that steps are being taken towards the unionisation of the early years sector and I and officials from the Department met ICTU on this subject. We agreed to continue to engage.
It should also include au pairs.
