I thank the Deputy. I am aware of the context, and that is why I thought it was important to get somebody with negotiation skills backed up by experts who have financial analysis to understand the means available to the orders and congregations with which these engagements are taking place. As I said earlier, I am not in a position to give a date today. I think it is important that we allow this process to run its course and that we allow these engagements to take place. I know the very deep interest here in the Oi…

EY has been involved in this process since November last year. Its task is to provide an independent financial assessment of the resources available to each of the organisations involved. I am not aware as to whether its analysis has been completed. Whether the report from the negotiator will be published at the end of the process will be a matter for the Government to make a determination on. A report will have to be brought to the Government. My recommendation would be to publish the report. It is important as pa…

Significant progress has been made in advancing plans for a dedicated State agency for early learning and care. The programme for Government contained a commitment to advance that. It is envisaged this agency will undertake some functions currently carried out by Pobal early years, including the Better Start programme, the 30 city and county childcare committees, as well as operational functions currently carried out directly in my Department. A programme oversight board has been established for the agency and is t…

I outlined a number of steps in the process. We are in the key second phase at the moment, involving an in-depth costing. When I originally brought proposals to Cabinet, we had a notional set-up cost of approximately €14 million and a notional operating cost per year of about €50 million. We are talking significant money, obviously. The Deputy knows me. I believe any money invested in our early years is money well spent but it is State taxpayers' money so we have to make the value-for-money case for the creation of…

I thank the Deputy. I could speak at length about the various things we have done in the early years sector. When I became Minister, my priorities were cutting the cost of childcare for parents, ensuring childcare professionals are better paid and improving the sustainability of childcare providers. We have done a significant amount in all three of those areas, while recognising there are still challenges. However, making the improvements there took a lot of time. I will be honest with the Deputy, I asked my team i…

I thank the Deputy. Ensuring high-quality early learning and childcare is affordable and accessible is a policy priority. The range of data available to my Department indicates that supply of early learning and childcare is increasing but I also recognise there are parts of the country where there are real capacity challenges. The latest early years sector profile survey showed that, between 2021-22 and 2022-23, the estimated number of enrolments in services rose by 8%, from 197,210 to 213,154. Core funding data al…

I thank the Deputies very much. I have a lot to address in one minute. Deputies Ó Cathasaigh and Gould raised the issue of the Before 5 centre and indeed the Tánaiste has raised it with me as well. As I explained to the Deputies, right now our capital funding schemes are for expansions. The situation with the Before 5 centre is where we have an existing service that needs capital to keep going what it has at the moment. We are looking to see if there is a way of repurposing some of our existing capital to a fund th…

The Cabinet committee on children, education and disability met two weeks ago. I presented on capacity, and this is one of the issues I flagged. There are guidelines for the use of school buildings, and we would certainly encourage as robust language as possible there. There are two elements here. There are after-school services and there are services that may run at the same time as school. A school may have been able to give a class for ECCE, for example, but may now have expanded, and that is a really difficult …

In budget 2024, I secured €4.5 million to commence the initial roll-out of equal start from September of this year. That allocation is equivalent to €13.5 million in a full year, and I will be very pleased to be able to fully announce equal start in May of this year. Equal start is a funding model and set of universal and targeted measures to support access to, and participation in, early learning and childcare for children and their families who experience disadvantage. It will consist of a series of measures to s…

There will be a range of universal and targeted supports, just like there are for AIM. There will be universal supports as regards better training for everybody in settings in terms of social inclusion and how to act on that within the particular setting. Better information will be provided to all parents so they understand what the supports available to them are. Not all parents know about the NCS, for example, or AIM. It is a matter of better informing parents as to what is there for them. There will be targeted …

One statistic that always strikes me is that Traveller children are 10% less likely to take up the free two-year ECCE scheme than children from the settled community. Those kids on day one of junior infants are immediately at an educational disadvantage and they are trying to catch up from day one. We are targeting those early years, but that also includes school-age childcare. It is to recognise that the education element here is so important. There are children who are slipping through the cracks and not getting …

I propose to take Questions Nos. 90 and 114 together. There have been significant developments in the entitlements to different forms of family leave for working families in recent years. The Government committed in the programme for Government 2020 to supporting parents, including by extending paid leave to allow them to spend more time with their children during their earliest years. Parents' leave and benefit have been extended significantly by this Government. It currently provides seven weeks' paid leave for e…

As the Deputy says, the Leave Our Leave campaign from the Irish Cancer Society is concerned with where a woman experiences cancer or a serious illness during her maternity leave and loses the leave while she is recovering. That is something I want to legislate for and I am looking to bring forward proposals on that. The point on the take-up of paternity leave and parents' leave is important. I do not have the full statistics here, but I recall during Covid when we moved from the two weeks parents' leave to five wee…

One of the key reasons we made parents' leave non-transferable between the two parents was because there is that societal pressure where, if you can transfer it, in a lot of situations dad's time would have gone to mam and that would have been the end of the conversation. We felt it was important to encourage dads in every way possible to spend that very valuable and potentially now 11 weeks' paid leave with their child in those initial two years. That is important. I also echo what the Deputy said about valuing th…

I touched on the matter already in answering Deputy Stanton's question. My Department is progressing a range of actions to ensure the supply of early learning and childcare provision meets demand. Work in this area is being led by a new supply management unit I established earlier this year in my Department. A key part of the supply management unit’s remit is to develop a planning function for monitoring, analysing and forecasting of the supply and demand, similar to the forward planning unit in the Department of E…

When I started in this role, costs for parents, lack of pay for staff and sustainability for providers were the big challenges. We have managed to do a significant amount in those three areas. Now capacity is the big challenge and I recognise that. We have a plan. A dedicated unit in my Department is looking at the national situation and putting in place the various measures to support it. Some of it involves providing capital money upfront. We have €80 million this year in capital funding. We will have more in 202…

First, to Deputy Smith, there is a real sense of urgency on the issue of capacity. It is now the big challenge. The big challenge has moved from affordability because we and I, as Minister, acted over a number of budgets to deal with that issue and we have made significant progress. We have a plan. We have capital funding and engagement with other Departments on removing the mechanisms. The situation where someone potentially has to give up work because of not being able to access childcare is serious and that is w…

I thank the Deputy. Reform of the early learning and childcare sector is included in the programme for Government, bringing together the best of community and private provision and the development of a new funding model to ensure an affordable, accessible, sustainable and high-quality sector. To address pressures on parents, providers and professionals, I have always stated that my goal is to increase State management of, and investment in, the sector. An expert group was established in September 2019 to develop th…

The Deputy is incorrect in saying so many childcare providers are leaving the system. We saw an increase in the overall provision of childcare providers last year and we saw the lowest number of them leaving the system in five years. Second, the number of children who benefit from the NCS has doubled during my term of office. That does not suggest that parents are unhappy with the system. That suggests that parents recognise the very significant investment the State is putting into the system. I recognise there is …

I absolutely agree we are not spending enough on early years but there is a reason for that. That is because the State only started to invest in childcare in 2008-2009 when the early childhood care and education, ECCE, scheme was first set up. Prior to that, the State stepped away entirely from the early years sector. When the Deputy compares us with Iceland and Sweden, she is comparing us with countries that have invested in this area for decades. I accept the key premise of the Deputy's question but will she reco…