We want to look at the Covid funding and, in light of the changed circumstances and reintroduction of lockdown, I will engage with Tusla on the Covid element over the next six weeks. It is important that, Covid aside, we have a significant increase in investment in Tusla and, in my engagement with the chair, Pat Rabbitte, and the CEO, Bernard Gloster, I outlined that I wanted to see domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, DSGBV, services broadly prioritised, Covid aside, in that spending. I am aware that they h…

The majority of the Covid money was for practical things like personal protective equipment, PPE, ICT services, extra computers so people could work at home and to enable them bring somebody in if a staff member was out sick with Covid or something like that. On the new funding for next year, that will be in the Tusla plan and once that is drafted I am sure we will get questions on it. I think I have four questions today out of the top 20 on domestic violence. The Deputy's colleague is asking a question on domestic…

I thank the Deputy. We had a good discussion about this issue in the select committee recently. Young people have been severely affected by the restrictions brought in to protect public health during this pandemic. This has been borne out by a good deal of research, particularly a recent piece of research commissioned by my Department and undertaken by SpunOut called How's Your Head. In recognition of the vital role played by youth work in providing support to young people, funding levels were maintained throughout…

As someone who fitted into the category of not being particularly sporty at that age, I recognise the importance of supporting the interests of young people beyond the area of sport. We in the Department have universal schemes and targeted schemes. The targeted schemes are to help young people, particularly in disadvantaged areas, but there is also the universal element. It is important that a young person from any area in the country should be able to avail of youth services. They are, as the Deputy outlined, so i…

There is no doubt that the move to level 5 presents challenges everywhere. The Deputy probably noticed yesterday that we continued to allow training for young teams. That is on the sports side of things but it is important for the issue of mental health, which the Deputy flagged. During the previous lockdown, a lot of youth services moved online very quickly and, as the levels of restriction came down, were able to come together in smaller groups. Unfortunately, for the time being we will be back to online provisio…

I propose to take Questions Nos. 26 and 43 together. I acknowledge the incredibly tough year that has been experienced across the sector by providers, childcare professionals, parents and teachers. The sector showed huge resilience in its initial reopening on 29 June and the subsequent reopening in September. It led the way for schools by showing how the public health guidance could be implemented, which gave real confidence that we could apply such guidance in schools. In the budget this year, I have secured a tot…

Yesterday's announcement by the Government about the changes to the EWSS will obviously benefit the childcare sector. That is important to note. Childcare was the only sector of the economy where everyone automatically went on to the scheme. That was an exemption I negotiated as part of the July stimulus package. As per the new EWSS figures, almost 82% of providers' staff costs will be met by the State. That is a significant figure at a time when childcare providers, along with teachers, are out there leading and e…

I thank the Deputies. Since I have come into this role I have been very clear that we need to change the way we operate childcare in this country. There are three major pieces of work going on at the moment which, when they conclude midway through next year, will give us the knowledge base to be able to, as the Deputy said, re-envisage how we look at childcare in this country. One of the key problems is that we worked too much on an ad hoc basis. There has been response after response over the past ten years which …

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 year…

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…

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 ta…

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…

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 o…

I thank the Deputy for his question. Everyone is aware of the great importance of the domestic, sexual and gender-based violence services at any time but now, in light of the current circumstances, they are particularly important. I welcome the focus by a number of Deputies on this particular issue. Improving services for victims of domestic violence is a key priority for the Government. The Deputy will have seen a very detailed section in the programme for Government on this particular area. This is reflected in m…

The Deputy raised a number of big questions. When the Cabinet discussed the move to level 5, the Minister for Justice and Equality and I spent a significant part of the meeting discussing the specific issue of domestic violence and reactivating the various Garda and Tusla programmes that were in place to support the victims across this period. During the original Covid-19 lockdown, it became clear that a significant number of existing refuges did not adequately provide for social distancing. As a result, a number o…

My Department has undertaken research on the impact of the lockdown on young children. We carried out detailed research with SpunOut, How's Your Head, which was both qualitative and quantitative in nature and by means of which we engaged with thousands of young people. The outcome of that influenced the Framework for Reopening and Operating Schools that was launched some months ago, obviously in a different context to the one we are in today. Research has been done and it is influencing what Government is doing. It…

The HIVE is part of the new early years platform which Pobal uses to administer the various early learning and childcare schemes. It is a self-service portal which has been designed to be accessible, intuitive and meet the current and the future needs of service providers. To date, for this programme year, September 2020 to August 2021, there are almost 130,000 children registered on the early years platform for the either the NCS or ECCE scheme so it is clear that a significant number of children have been success…

I cannot disagree with anything the Deputy said. I am not making excuses but there is a context in terms of Covid-19 whereby a significant change is being made to a system. Training and significant online seminars were provided to providers but, understandably, many of the latter were focused on reopening, putting in place the Perspex screens and spending the capital grants we had given them to get their services ready for the return to childcare. There were delays in answering emails, and I am aware there was a de…

Part of the organisational review I spoke about earlier - the three pieces of work - is to look at the overall infrastructure, whether there are elements of duplication and how we can make the system better and more streamlined. Part of that work is ongoing and, in fairness, my Department identified that there are issues in that regard. As regards the initial setting up in the HIVE, once a provider is established, they are established. There was a big piece of work to be done this year for many of them which will n…

The NCS was launched in November 2019. There are currently 33,700 children accessing NCS subsidies. In addition, there are children benefiting from the legacy schemes also. The online application process was designed to be accessible and user-friendly, although I acknowledge that not everybody found it so. The flexibility of the NCS means that the scheme is designed to recognise that each family's childcare needs are different and, depending on the particular application type and family circumstances of an applican…