Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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I welcome the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman.

Emer Currie (Fine Gael)
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I move:

"That Seanad Éireann:

welcomes: - the extensive commitments by the Government to address long-standing challenges in the early learning and childcare sector and to improve access, affordability, and quality of provision;

- the increase to over €1 billion per annum in State funding for the sector this year, including Core Funding, a new model which aims to improve pay and conditions for staff, capacity for parents and stability for operators, and which requires ongoing partnership and dialogue with providers in relation to funding levels;

- the significant prioritisation by the Government to reduce early learning and childcare costs for families through the National Childcare Scheme and progress to extend subsidies to childminders in providers homes;

- the work underway in advancing plans for a dedicated State agency for early learning childcare, consolidating functions currently undertaken by Pobal Early Years, Better Start and the City/County Childcare Committees, as well as the operational functions currently undertaken by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth;

- the €70 million Building Blocks Capital Programme, under the National Development Plan, designed to meet current and long-term early learning and childcare infrastructure needs with a focus on places for children from 1 to 3 years;

- the commitment to update the current planning guidelines for early learning and childcare;

- the establishment of a new Supply Management Unit in the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth to undertake a more detailed analysis of supply and demand;

- housing commencement numbers for 2024, with a total of 32,121 homes commenced since the first of January to the end of May, which is 98 percent of the total number of homes constructed in 2023; recognises: - an increasing and worrying trend of waiting lists of up to three years for creche places nationally, and limited childcare options for children under one, causing stress and distress for parents, mainly impacting women and their return to work after maternity leave;

- a lack of suitable premises in appropriate locations for childcare providers as well as the high cost of acquiring and fitting out new premises, which often makes it unviable for providers to open services or expand;

- that empty childcare units, applications for change of use, and childcare facilities that are a component of planning permission but have not been built, are too common occurrences at a local level;

- that thousands of apartments in the Greater Dublin Area have been built without childcare facilities in the past five years;

- the vital link between new housing, social infrastructure and access to community services;

- the difficulties rural areas with limited development face in accessing creches;

- the 2001 Guidelines for Planning Authorities on Childcare Facilities have critical flaws, gaps, exemptions, and loopholes, leaving many communities and families without adequate access to childcare;

- the lack of a functioning forward planning system for childcare; calls for: - an effective planning and development system that will forecast, assess, and respond to childcare demand in local areas;

- the publication of new planning guidelines for local authorities on childcare facilities as promised, with the specific purpose of delivering sufficient, appropriate, and state-of-the-art childcare infrastructure for local communities across the country;

- an independent review of the current standard of 20 childcare places per 75 dwellings based on international best practice and demographic evidence nationally;

- ‘Technical Guidance’ to be provided to local authorities for each type of childcare service, similar to the Department of Education for school buildings, and mandatory in nature, to ensure childcare units are purpose-built and in compliance with all relevant regulations;

- the strengthening of roles, competence and capacity within local authorities and childcare committees in advance of the formation of a dedicated State agency for childcare;

- an audit to be conducted of empty childcare units nationally and consideration to be given to powers for the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth to compel developers to make empty units available for childcare purposes:

- one-bedroom apartments to be included in calculating the need for childcare places and the closing down of current loopholes where housing can be built without childcare provision;

- the Government to develop a new State model for the acquisition of childcare facilities based on learnings from the Part V process already in place under the Planning and Development Act, which compels developers to build social and affordable housing in new developments at a reduced cost through an ‘open book’ exercise of verifiable costs; this would allow those childcare facilities to be leased back to providers at a reasonable cost thus making them more attainable for providers;

- all area-based plans to include a requirement for the co-location of childcare facilities on proposed primary and post-primary school sites and/or as part of a campus of community services."

I thank the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, for taking our motion on better planning for local childcare provision. I congratulate him on his ascension to leader of the Green Party. The Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, was in the House this morning for Committee Stage of the Planning and Development Bill 2023. This issue was raised during that debate, which I welcome. I am very much aware that delivering the proposals set out in the motion will require the efforts of both Departments, working together, not just to deliver childcare infrastructure in communities but childcare infrastructure for communities. I thank the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, for taking the lead on this today.

Our childcare supply is driven and dependent on the decisions and viability of private providers and a much smaller cohort of community-run services. It is the childcare providers themselves who respond to the need and demand for childcare in communities. The State, of course, supports them, and supports parents, with an unprecedented level of Exchequer funding, including for capacity building. The State is responsible for operational requirements and policy. Ultimately, however, we rely and depend on private and community providers, whether that be childminders working in their home, a local Montessori or a childcare facility that is part of a larger chain, to open up in our neighbourhoods and provide access to childcare and school-age care.

The State contributes to the provision of childcare infrastructure. In the motion, I acknowledge the €70 million allocated to the building blocks capital programme under the national development plan, NDP. A total of 23 projects have been provisionally approved across the country for energy upgrades and retrofitting. A new scheme worth €25 million will open in the autumn to cater for extensions and the purchase and building of community services for one- to three-year-olds. That is welcome news.

The planning system supports the delivery of childcare infrastructure. There is supposed to be a link between new development, particularly residential development, and the provision of childcare facilities. Under the 2001 guidelines for planning authorities on childcare facilities, for every 75 homes built, there is a benchmark of at least one childcare facility for 20 children. This is a really positive way of linking the building of homes with the building of communities and the provision of essential social infrastructure. However, that level of provision simply is not happening. For every 75 homes being built, we are not seeing childcare facilities being built or opened.

That is a consequence of exemptions and loopholes in the guidelines, gaps in our planning process and financial pressures on providers, who cannot afford to build the facilities. Instead of what should be a very effective funnel for the delivery of childcare infrastructure in communities, the provision of childcare facilities is marked by inconsistency across communities, in local authority areas and throughout the country.Housing supply is increasing, which is positive for families. However, the more it increases and the more homes that are built or commenced, and 32,000 have been commenced so far this year, the more we are missing out on the opportunity for childcare supply and the longer we deal with the problems of childcare shortages. Our planning laws and guidelines need an urgent overhaul and we need a robust forward planning and development process to provide sufficient childcare spaces for parents, families and communities, and to support our hardworking providers and educators.

I have put together a report that draws on case studies from Dublin West but I believe they are symptomatic of issues in other counties too. There is variance across the country depending on the local authority and county or city childcare committee. I will go through some of those because I think the individual case studies help to build the picture.

I recall both the Minister and I raising the issue of one particular empty crèche unit in Bracken Park, Carpenterstown, with Fingal County Council a long time ago. That crèche unit consisted of two three-storey shell and core units, built ten years ago, in the same style as the houses beside them. One has been granted a change of use to a house while the other still lies vacant. There have been several applications to change the second unit to a house. Potential providers say it is too expensive and awkward a building to buy and kit out for regulations and make work as a crèche. That building is going to waste as either a home or as a crèche.

There is another example in Barnwell, Dublin 15, which also consists of two core and shell units that are identical to the houses next door except for the presence of a set-down area. It was completed in June 2022. The developer applied for a change of use to two houses six months later. Potential providers say it is at the back of estate and difficult to access. It is economically unviable for them for them to buy and fit out and lends itself more to a house than crèche.

Rokeby Park crèche was empty for the four years from 2018 to 2022. It eventually opened as a crèche but is now closing to become an autism preschool. It is, of course, good news that an autism preschool is opening but the reason the crèche is closing is because of issues with the recruitment and retention of staff. There is still demand for childcare in the area.

A childcare unit was built in Rathborne Park in Ashtown to serve 250 homes. It was empty for five years until it sold recently. A childcare unit at Phoenix Park racecourse with 750 homes was empty for nearly five years until going sale agreed recently. Coincidently, both of those crèches went on the market or sold at the same time as questions were being asked about them, which may or may not have had something to do with it. I know from talking to providers that it was challenging for them to view one of those units over the years despite numerous attempts.

There is also the Windmill development, which was a strategic housing development. A total of 211 apartments were built for rent, including 68 one-bed apartments and 133 two-bed apartments. No crèche was provided because there was a Giraffe childcare facility close by, even though Giraffe and other childcare facilities in the immediate area have extensive waiting lists. Because Giraffe was nearby, the development was exempted from the requirement of building a crèche.

In Castlefield Hall in Clonsilla, all 102 homes are finished but the builder has said they are not going to build the crèche that was included in planning.

A crèche at St. Joseph's development, which adjoins Clonsilla and Hansfield, was supposed to have been built three years ago for 224 homes. It was advertised in the brochure when the houses and apartments went on sale but no crèche was built. The developer recently got permission to push out building the crèche to the next phase of the Hansfield strategic development zone, leaving all the families that bought there three years ago without childcare provision.

As I previously mentioned, the 2001 childcare facilities guidelines for planning authorities set out a benchmark of at least one childcare facility per 75 dwellings in new housing developments. Those guidelines recommend those services take approximately 20 children. In Dublin West over the past five years, in both the Fingal County Council and Dublin City Council areas, according to the Central Statistics Office, CSO, we have seen approximately 4,000 new homes built and nowhere near that level of childcare provision. Of course, some crèches have been opened subject to these guidelines. When I looked back on all the planning applications for new developments of more than 75 dwellings that have been built in Dublin West over the past ten years, I found six up and running. We need all of these childcare places to be accessible to the public. This is a concentrated area, as the Minister know, where both providers and parents are crying out for suitable premises and places. It points to a failure within the planning system, starting with critical inadequacies in the 2001 guidelines. There are exemptions for one-bedroom apartments, so while more are being built, developers do not need to factor them in when calculating the need for childcare as if single people or young couples do not have babies. Unfortunately, the guidelines only apply to individual planning applications and not multiple developments of fewer than 75 dwellings in a new residential area. Therefore, whole communities can be left without childcare and with no regard to services for the overall population.

Another loophole is that the developer can claim that a new facility is not required as there are childcare providers already operating in the area even though they may have extensive waiting lists. The developer only has to provide a shell of a building, often resulting in buildings that are not fit for purpose in their location, size, layout, brief and regulatory compliance. They can then require substantial additional expenditure, making it financially unviable for a childcare provider to take them. Unsurprisingly, developers see them as a potential liability, which is incentivising them to seek a change-of-use strategy or to sit on them as assets.

There are also major gaps in the planning process. The national planning framework recognises the importance of childcare provision but there are no mandatory referrals for assessing childcare requirements in new residential developments and communities as there is for road infrastructure, water services, schools and even aviation flight paths. The local authority might consult the local childcare committee, but this is on an ad hocbasis and varies across the country. The local authorities and city and county child care committees, CCCs, are not skilled up or resourced to take on that responsibility at the moment.

It is about childcare infrastructure in the community and for the community. There must be an understanding of what is required in specific areas, whether that is early childhood care and education, ECCE, school-age care or baby rooms. We need that local knowledge. The process is without a robust local evidence-based assessment and is skewed by the input of the developer. That has to change.

I know the Minister agrees. We have a planning system that does not prioritise childcare as the essential community service it is. Even though the guidelines have a credible overall approach to linking childcare provision with the provision of new homes, there is not a functional process to deliver them or deliver for the needs of the area. As the Minister knows, this is not the first time I and others in this House have raised the need for reform with the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. Both have said that updated planning guidelines for childcare facilities in draft form should be open for public consultation in 2024, which is really welcome. I hope the Minister can give us an update in that regard. The problem is that the longer it takes to fix, the more opportunities we miss to ensure the delivery of childcare places keeps pace with the upturn in housing delivery not just for those communities but for the childcare infrastructure deficit we already have. Parents, primarily mothers, want to get back to work but do not know if they are going to be able to secure a childcare place. Providers who want to set up new services or expand their services are left without suitable and affordable premises. They deserve a supportive environment for the sector.

In recent answers the Minister has given, I have heard some positive news about his Department developing a planning function and a supply management unit to look at supply in a nuanced and specific way. I would appreciate an update in that regard and would like to know how that matches up with the roles of local authorities and childcare committees on the ground.

The recommendations are based on the learnings from the report.The Government should develop a new model for the State to acquire childcare facilities built by developers which could then be leased back to providers at a reasonable cost. This is based on what we are already doing in the Part V process under the Planning and Development Act, which compels developers to build social and affordable housing in new developments at a reduced cost through an open book exercise of verifiable costs. This would mean that childcare would be included and built at cost when new developments are built. The State would then take this asset and lease it back to the providers at a reduced cost, helping them in the invaluable work they do.

All developments over a certain size should contribute to childcare infrastructure through construction, a financial contribution or building or providing it elsewhere. Councillors throughout the country want flexibility. They want to be able to work with developers, so that if a childcare facility is not needed in one estate but there is a unit elsewhere in a more populated location, there could be as swap. A similar approach kicks in Part V where there are nine dwellings or more. All of these developments contribute to the social and affordable housing stock.

The required scale and type of childcare facility for an area should be identified during pre-planning consultations, through a mandatory and strengthened role for the local authority and childcare committees. An approved housing body would be able to guide or work with the local authority on what type of units are required. This could be made part of the pre-planning process. The planning functions of the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Youth and Integration and a future childcare State agency should be built up so they are ready to take on these roles and can work together from the bottom up and the top down.

We must ensure that all childcare units are purpose-built and in compliance with all relevant regulations through the publication of mandatory technical guidance, similar to what the Department of Education does. I could not believe it when I spoke to local authorities and they told me they did not have this information. The standard of 20 childcare places per 75 dwellings should be independently reviewed, based on international best practice and demographic evidence from Ireland.

We should put an end to exemptions for one-bedroom apartments and close down the loopholes whereby hundreds and thousands of apartments can be built without any consideration given to childcare provision. We also need to act seriously on having a campus of community services for new areas and new school sites.

Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael)
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I second the motion.

Erin McGreehan (Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the Minister to the House. I thank Senator Currie and the Fine Gael Senators for tabling the motion. It is very important that we all speak in here on childcare. The Government is the first Government to have a real focus on childcare and it is very welcome. It has provided one of the largest budgets ever. We have seen a lot of positive changes over the past four years. The Minister has stuck to his word. I remember speaking to him in the first year of the Government and over the years. We are right to be ambitious. We have come a long way and we are very right to be ambitious for our childcare sector, the people who work in it and the children who use it. I support many of the points Senator Currie made on advanced planning and looking at where we have neglected to put in childcare facilities after we had planned for them. We have to work around it.

To swing away from the motion on the childcare sector I will reiterate, as I have on many occasions and I know the Minister supports it, the professionalisation of the sector. We must ensure we have career progression in the sector and that the people working there are valued as educators. They are highly educated people. As we know, they are highly-qualified and their income does not match what they have done at university. As a pitch for budget 2025 I ask that we earmark more money for salaries for people working in the sector.

I support pathways for public childcare spaces. We have an opportunity for this. We see where places have not been developed into the planned childcare facilities. How can the State create a mechanism, as Senator Currie has asked, whereby the State owns a building, takes a lease on it and tenders it out or empowers county childcare committees to facilitate it? I know this is ambitious but we have to be ambitious for our children and the people working in the sector.

The sector is under pressure. Smaller providers lose staff to bigger providers because of an inability to pay larger incomes. They are at the mercy of so many factors. A childcare facility in my area had to let go staff over the summer because a bus stopped coming. It experienced this bad luck. A bus stopped coming to the area which meant the after-school programme was gone and it had to let go staff. Everything had been put in place. There was a beautiful facility but the after-school service is gone because of a bus. There is this flexibility and volatility in the sector. A school would not have closed down because there would have been a need for it. We would have been able to create a mechanism to get the children to it and make sure it had the staff. The service hopes it can get the staff back in September but it is not sure.

My pitch for budget 2025 is to look after the sector, which is very important. We should create pathways whereby the State can come in and allow for public childcare. The Department of Education should be integrated with the Department of children with regard to future planning and supply management, and look at where we have certain numbers of houses. An entire village is being built in south Dundalk in the Haggardstown-Blackrock area. There is little to no childcare provision and 5,000 houses are being built. In north Drogheda a road has been built to facilitate thousands of houses but there are no childcare facilities. Future planning should include examining the population to see how we can do this.

It would serve our country very well to look after our children and educate them and make sure the professionals in the sector are taken care of and valued as educators. The women who looked after my children in early childhood were educators. The children still speak of them years later. They are a very important part of a child's education and social development. I would love to see the Department of children work far more closely with the Department of Education and the Department with responsibility for planning. I would like to see more integration.

Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein)
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It is good to see the Minister and he is very welcome. I commend Senator Currie on raising this topic. It is very important and close to my heart. I worked on the SIPTU campaign on recognition for a number of years.We had a really good meeting with SIPTU representatives the week before last, and Senator McGreehan was in attendance on the day.

I agree with Senator Currie on the broad scope of this motion. It is very clear that there needs to be a lot more tightening up in terms of planning. There needs to be assurance that we have childcare facilities in place wherever they are needed. Sinn Féin has no problem supporting the motion but I want to put it in context. The context was put very well by SIPTU when its representatives were here before us the week before last. They said the following on behalf of the workers in the sector:

We are caught in a vicious cycle of low pay, a staffing crisis and increased stress and burnout which is undermining our profession and the viability of services to children and families.

Low pay is the biggest cause of this staffing crisis. Despite recent pay increases, the minimum rate of pay for an Early Years Educator is €13.65 per hour, €1.15 below the Living Wage of €14.80. Simply put, we cannot afford to stay in our profession.

Government and employers must accept their responsibility and tackle the low pay crisis in a meaningful way. Interminable delays to pay agreements may benefit employers in the short term, but ultimately undermine the sustainability and viability of the sector.

I am on record as having recognised that the Minister established an ERO. He has put additional funding into the sector, which I welcome. It was a good, progressive move. The difficulty the workers find themselves in is that the employers are dragging themselves each week and each year to delay any further ERO. That has to be recognised; it is a fact. The SIPTU representatives told us that directly. Therefore, there is a problem. Is the problem all about funding? It is certainly the cause in part, but, in fairness to the Minister, there is another issue. The issue is fundamentally one that we all need to address. Do we have the correct model to deliver childcare? I do not believe we do. If we were to invent primary school education tomorrow, would we really leave it to the private sector? Of course, we would not. Imagine if we did. It would be in crisis constantly.

If we are going to argue – I agree with the argument – that the State should step in where required to secure childcare facilities, why are we not following through logically and arguing that the State should then provide public childcare? Why are we the outlier in Europe? When I work in Europe at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, I am lucky enough to meet colleagues from the main European countries and they explain to me how childcare provision works in those countries. It works through public provision. I do not understand why that part of the conversation has not happened in this State.

Ultimately, there is a contradiction between the desire to increase rates of pay and conditions for workers in the sector and the necessity of private employers to make profit in the sector. It is a problem. In fairness to the Minister, he has taken some steps to try to improve pay and conditions in the sector. I recognise that but it has not gone far enough. I can see what the problem is at present. It is that the employer groups are saying they do not really want to pay any more, even though the turnover rate is 25% in the sector at the minute. How do you build a quality early years education sector, to give it its correct title, when we have these challenges? The State and Government need to be courageous enough to consider the logical way forward and do what we would do for any other part of the education sector. We know from research that early years education is more important in terms of the value it adds to children than primary school education. That is what the science tells us. Again, it raises the question of why we are leaving it to the private sector.

I commend Senator Currie on the motion. It is good and we need to do much more in planning to ensure we have facilities in place and that they are filled, but I do not agree with the idea that we should just lease back the facilities to the private sector. If we do that, we will not fix the bigger problem. Fundamentally, the bigger problem, which was acknowledged very well in Senator Currie’s speech, is that we do not have sufficient early years provision. My argument and that of Sinn Féin is that we are not going to fix it by leaving it to the marketplace or by largely leaving it to the marketplace and subsidising it to some degree. What we need to do is remember the importance of early years education.

A significant move I call for is the movement of this whole area to the Department of Education. That is where it belongs.

Emer Currie (Fine Gael)
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It does.

Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael)
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Yes.

Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein)
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I hope we all agree on that. In saying that, I mean no disrespect to the Minister. As I have said, I believe he has made a good start but the problem is that the workers are stuck now. They are still stuck on rates of pay that are far too low. I am not sure that the Minister has the capacity under the current model to fix that. Therefore, I ask him to have the courage to embrace the call for the public provision of childcare and work out a roadmap for how to get that done. If we do not have that roadmap, we will not get where we want and we will be having this conversation again in 12 or 24 months. I hope there will be a consensus on this issue.

Again, I commend Senator Currie for her motion. Although I have to leave, I will note the Minister’s response later. I look forward to it.

Marie Sherlock (Labour)
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I thank the Minister for coming into the Chamber. I sincerely thank Senator Currie for tabling this really important motion. All opportunities to continue to shine a spotlight on what needs to be done in childcare are very welcome. We all acknowledge that a huge amount has been achieved in this space in recent years. Notwithstanding that, there is considerable frustration among parents. My experience locally on the north side is that waiting times, particularly for babies, have never been worse. In this regard, I dealt with a father the other day whose baby is due to be born in October, hopefully. The couple has been told there might be a preschool place by mid-2026 for the child. There is the waiting times issue and a shortage of baby places. The incentive with regard to the baby places is also an issue, as is the lack of co-ordination between the Department of Education and the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. I have spoken about this before. We have heard about the loss of 105 places in Stoneybatter because of changes made by the Department of Education that effectively closed down two preschools. There is considerable frustration among parents and workers. Senator Gavan talked about the high turnover rate. The wages are simply not enough. I understand that not a single person who graduated from DCU last year – I was at the graduation ceremony – is in the sector today. Their degree was in early years education but they are all moving into primary school education, simply because it is the only way to have a decent standard of living. That is telling in itself.

The providers themselves tell me core funding is no longer working for them. They include the small providers, whose financial and administrative requirements mean the use of a chartered accountant and who struggle with the cost of operating. There is a raft of issues. With regard to the recognition of qualifications, on the basis of a bizarre turn of circumstances you need a higher level of qualification to work as an AIM worker than to work as an SNA in a primary or secondary school. That is not a reflection on what we require of SNAs in primary and secondary schools, but there is a genuine difficulty in recruiting AIM workers. What is to be done? We need to examine core funding and who is getting what. I am aware that the Minister has a particular interest in this. I believe the Minister’s Department estimated that €55 million of the €207 million given in the first tranche of core funding related to the cost of the ERO, the cost of the wages of those working in the sector. We have to ask where the rest of the money is going within the sector. Core funding is now well in excess of €300 million and we have to ask how much the Department has determined to be the cost of the most recent ERO, which was put in place of June this year. Again, workers tell us it is not enough. It is certainly something but not enough. Where is the rest of the money going? The small providers tell me funding will be used to try to maintain their operation, but what about the bigger providers? We know that core funding is very much to meet capacity, so the bigger providers are getting more than the smaller providers. We have to ask where the money is going.

I saw the article today that states one of the largest providers in the country is effectively saying she will have to leave the arrangement for core funding because she is not getting enough and cannot pay her wages. Fundamental questions have to be asked regarding some of these providers.As I understand it, that particular provider got investment of €10.5 million in 2021 and the investment vehicle invested in both childcare and nursing homes. The question now is who that childcare provider is working for. Why is it under so much pressure? Is it to yield a dividend for its shareholder, or is it because it is impacted by the cost of operations? Those questions have to be asked, particularly of some of the biggest operators in the State. If we have a system that is effectively benefitting profit as opposed to the workers in the system and parents through lower costs, then we need to have a review and look at how core funding is operating.

I thank Senator Currie for these suggestions, and they are good stepping stones, but the Labour Party certainly wants to go further in seeing a public model where the State itself steps in and intervenes to set up early-years services. On those providers who say they will close down or leave core funding, I would like to hear a commitment from this Government that if there is a closure of core funding places in a particular locality, the State will step in and provide core funded places. We cannot have a situation where parents will be exposed to significant fee increases. It is unacceptable and the antithesis of what we want in this country, which is a more affordable childcare system.

I turn to the building blocks programme, which has been an issue close to my heart for a long time when I look at the dire shortage in the north inner city and areas across the northside in particular. I welcome that the money has finally been put in place to try to expand capacity. When I look at the detail, it is ultimately predicated on matching funding for community services. As I understand it, the threshold is up to €500,000. Where will the rest of the money come from for those community services that will set up new childcare facilities? As I see it, the rest of the funding goes to expansion of existing places, but if you do not have the physical space to expand, then what will you do? We know the price of property, particularly in Dublin-----

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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Thank you, Senator.

Marie Sherlock (Labour)
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-----is quite high. I apologise to the Acting Chair but this is important. We have to see real investment. We saw the EU structural funds in the 1990s come in and I see it mentioned over the doors of some of the community early-years services in the inner city. They came in with serious money to build early-years services. We need the State doing the same.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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Thank you, Senator.

Marie Sherlock (Labour)
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I thank Senator Currie for this, but we want to see a bigger and more expansive plan of action with regard to a State-led system of affordable and better paid childcare for those working in the system.

Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. I have seconded the Fine Gael motion on better planning for local childcare. I thank Senator Currie for her work on this, her continuous efforts to support families and her determination to find solutions. This is of course an innovative approach. The Government has made strides in supporting parents to access lower cost childcare. We have seen the Government investment, as referenced by Senator Currie, in childcare building blocks and we will see over €25 million in the autumn for extensions and the purchase of buildings. Again, that will be extremely popular, but there is a challenge in rural areas, as well as in our cities and smaller towns. I see childcare waiting lists of up to three years. I deal with families who come to me explaining there could be a three year waiting list. We need to see supports. In my case, I am looking at community childcare and how it can purchase, build and expand its service. The community childcare service in my hometown of Ballinasloe, County Galway, is in serious demand because it offers pre-school and after school. However, as Senator Currie said, and as has been noted in this motion, the Government has improved access, affordability and quality, but we are speaking here about capacity. We see the population of 5.2 million. We see an expanding population because Ireland is growing. We see families struggling because they cannot now get to work. We have more than 130 new homes in my hometown. That is 130 new families, but there is unfortunately not an increase in facilities. This means mothers and fathers need access and choice and they need childcare. It could be for a few hours in the morning or the afternoon. It could be to do their shopping, get some sleep or, more than anything, get to work. Let us face it, this more than likely impacts on women - the mums more than the dads. It is another obstacle for parents if they do not have a choice to return to work. That is income into the household and career choice.

Some parts of the motion we have highlighted are empty childcare units and applications for change of use and childcare units that are a component of planning permission, but which have not been built. This could be an opportunity for the proposed new childcare agency. The option being proposed could see the agency working with local authorities, perhaps linking in with developers as part of the planning conditions and looking at the option to lease to private and public providers, including the community childcare group. This option could help accelerate immediate capacity. It is a way for us to look at how we get immediate capacity, which I think is the goal of all of us. We are joined at the hip on that one. The Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, was in the Chamber earlier and spoke about the new ten-year county development plans, which will be linked to the census and things like regional growth centres identified across towns and the whole country. In my constituency, we have one in Athlone, County Westmeath. We have two key towns. That needs to be part of it. That is in the time to come, but we are looking at what we can do now for immediate capacity. I support the call for an audit to be conducted of empty childcare units nationally and that powers be given to the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth to compel developers to make empty units available for childcare purposes.

It is important we see supports in place. We are making great strides, as is the Department, in supports to reduce the cost of childcare for parents. This is the next step in that challenge. Our ambition has been raised and our expectations are higher, but it is thanks to the fact that more people, parents and families are availing of this. I will follow on from Senator Currie's contribution and say that this new model will open up new opportunities for small to medium childcare providers and community-led partnerships. It is about fostering a supportive environment for the childcare sector and also acting as a stepping stone to further provision in the future. That is under the better planning for accessible childcare from Senator Currie. I know this has been an extremely busy and active area. I know that the new childcare agency will give the Minister much more support in terms of a dedicated operations team. It will probably take parts that sit within other agencies and Departments and bring them together to drive real change. I believe this is an interesting and innovative potential solution and we could drive that to ensure we have additional capacity to help parents and families who are struggling right now because they cannot get access to childcare places.

Shane Cassells (Fianna Fail)
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I welcome today's motion and the discussion about childcare. At the outset, I pay tribute to the Minister and this Government for the work they have done over the past four and a half years. It has been hugely important and massively accelerated the professionalisation and development of early learning and childcare in this country. With this motion, we are rightly discussing the need for the development of childcare facilities in new areas. However, the reality is that at the start of this Government's term the sector was on its knees and nearly at the point of collapse. That was the starting point. The work done by the Minister and the Government has stabilised and strengthened that sector and given it a chance to survive, thrive and develop. We have done that through a series of measures, primarily the introduction of core funding.There has been a lot of debate and discussion in the sector and indeed in the Dáil, mostly from ill-informed members of the Opposition trying to score points and sow discord within the sector. The fact is, core funding is good for the sector, staff, parents and the professional development of childcare and early learning. In recent weeks, some hugely significant pieces of work have been introduced by the Minister. First, there is Equal Start, which ensures children from areas of disadvantage, Traveller children, Roma children and children availing of the national childcare scheme through its sponsor body can access meaningful participation in early learning. That funding, which will equate to nearly €14 million in a full year, is a significant body of work. The Child Care (Amendment) Act 2024 is going to help massively as well. People are talking about the availability of spaces. The Act will enable childminding-specific regulations, which will enable parents who use childminders to access national childcare scheme subsidies. There is also the €25 million building blocks extension grant scheme, to which reference was made.

Senator Gavan spoke about the colleagues he has dealt with across with across Europe and the concept of public provision of childcare, and I do not necessarily disagree with that. However, what we have to recognise is how the sector in Ireland evolved in the first place. We were not on a par with those countries and to compare us would be like comparing apples and oranges. Notwithstanding that, we are building an early years education sector that is fit for purpose. We regulated the private market. Sometimes people demonise those in the private sector, but they are providing the facilities and the education system that we require. They are the people who were in situ. Rather than discard decades of work and professionalisation that was done, the State engaged with those people and, through public money, regulated the sector to ensure fairness for parents and to bring that system together. Recognition of that would not go amiss when we are debating that and comparing and contrasting us with Europe because there are many positives. It is a disservice to the professionals working within the sector not to acknowledge that.

In respect of those delivering it, it would be remiss of me not to mention the county childcare committees that operate the delivery of those services at a local level in particular. My wife was the co-ordinator in Meath for many years. The work they do in delivering the schemes on behalf of the Government is hugely significant. In mentioning Meath, let us take a cursory glance at some of the figures, because there is over €300 million in core funding. What does that mean as a case study in one particular county? In Meath, the number of services in contract for core funding in 2023 was 183 and they were receiving nearly €10 million worth of funding from the Department, with an average payment of nearly €54,000 and a median payment of some €24,000. As regards the narrative going on here, 99% of all those services benefited from increased funding under core funding and approximately 1% benefited from a funding guarantee that ensured no service would receive less. That is important in the context of this debate.

I welcome the debate and the highlighting of areas of concern. When planning authorities are dealing with new development, there is a very good synergy between local authority planning departments and county childcare committees. Oftentimes there are issues pertaining to displacement, in terms of demographic changes, and natural wastage that happens within the sector. There are many people in the Houses who like to refer to the number of services that are closing. If we drilled into the figures and met and talked to those people, we would know they are closing because they are coming up to retirement age. The number of services coming on stream is exceeding the number that are closing. I urge those who speak about this, especially those in the Opposition, to show a bit of fairness. If they have no fairness for those in government, they should show a bit of fairness to those actually delivering the services on the ground because they are doing an exceptional job. I thank the Minister for his work in the area.

Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael)
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Lest anyone thinks I am unqualified to speak in this area, I have owned a childcare facility. I built the largest one in the city in 2002. I have been a consultant to the sector and led them through GDPR. I have consulted and been a mentor on county childcare committees. If anyone thinks I do not know what I am talking about, actually I do.

When I speak to and meet with services, I understand their challenges. I have been appointed by county councils throughout the country to go in and troubleshoot where services are in financial difficulty to manage them out of crises. When there have been scandals, I have been asked to go in to fix and regulate it, all in the support of parents and, most important, of the precious children. We have been on a trajectory for a very long time, beginning with the ECCE scheme, of ensuring there is serious State intervention in the funding of childcare because our children deserve to be completely and utterly supported and those early years are precious developmental formative years that need intervention and support. We see that if we have early intervention, so much can change in the trajectory and support of a child in his or her life. We have been on a good programme from the ECCE funding, which was amplified during Covid, and then bringing in core funding.

I completely support core funding. It is fantastic and a huge intervention, which is brilliant. Are there difficulties in it? Yes, there are. Not all services are these huge big ones. Some services are owned by pension funds, and I do not support their profit being increased. However, there are services that have been caught in their 2019 fees, that were then caught by the fee freezes during Covid and under core funding. While I appreciate an intervention will come in September and there is a mechanism coming, there is a sort of a tendency to dismiss the private operators that are claiming their funding. I have tabled Commencement matters on the issue and made repeated queries about how we are dealing with the core funding and the people who are claiming they have issues. In the beginning, I was given briefing notes to go before the media and say that the sustainability fund was the be-all and end-all, but when I went under the hood of that it was not the case. Very few services have availed of it. It has been said that it is just a cranky minority, but that is not the case. There are very real issues that have to be considered.

For instance, there is the ratio reality. We set the ratios of adult to babies in the baby room and toddler room. Those ratios must be adhered to or it is a serious contravention of the preschool regulations. Let us think about that. We have one staff member for three babies in a baby room. Under the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997, those staff members are entitled to go on their breaks, their lunch and have their holidays, which means they are missing for 20 days of the year. Those days must be covered. There has to be a second staff member for those three babies to cover all of that. There have to be additional staff members. It is not as straightforward as it looks. That is costly. You have to have people who are covering breaks to make sure that all of these things are done. There is a reality in the provision of childcare. We need to drill down and that granular detail has to be considered in light of escalating costs, such as energy costs and all of these things. We need to do that and engage seriously with the people who are saying they are in difficulty. The vast majority of them are not in it for massive profits; they are in it because they are dedicated to childcare. A neighbour of mine owns two creches and every day of her week, every waking moment is ploughed into ensuring they are the best childcare providers they can be.

We have a challenge in planning and development.There are services being built in some development schemes, and a crèche is put in in response to the regulations. However, the crèche is too small and not viable when someone goes to tender for it. Alternatively, developers are allowed to exempt themselves from the provision of childcare. That exemption should be removed. There should be a minimum size of service in order that it is financially viable to be run and the State should be claiming that under Part V. We should be bringing that in so that it becomes a community service and then we are in control. For as long as we look at it, we will have to be in this hybrid model of public and private. The private sector is not something to be in any way nervous about. They all dedicated people. They are all people who are mad about children and are absolutely dedicated to them.

I have a sympathy for early years having a remit in the Department of Education; that is no reflection on the Minister at all. However, such services cannot be the Cinderella. We want cradle to school-leaving age children absolutely supported and absolutely respected. As for the professionals, children need psychologists and all of these services now. We need to move to that wraparound. If that is secured, I do not care what Department it is under. However, there is a certain synergy for having it in the education remit in order that it can be on the same campus as primary and secondary schools because that campus mentality would be very good. We see that in the likes of St. Ultan's, Cherry Orchard, where children are brought into the crèche and then going to school and secondary school is not a big deal. It was one of the core matters we discussed with the Minister under the care of the child.

I commend Senator Currie. As I was so busy responding, I forgot to do so and so I say well done to the Senator. Senator Currie’s advocacy on core funding, services and the diminution of services' ability has restored my heart because I thought I was alone in this fight for the past three years.

Seán Kyne (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the Minister and congratulate him on recently assuming the leadership of his party. I also acknowledge the work of Senator Currie in framing this motion and the opportunity to present today on this important matter.

It is safe to say, going around even this city ahead of the recent elections, where I canvassed for some local election candidates, particularly in some of the newer estates we would see an area set aside, left aside and perhaps fenced off. We would be told that is where the crèche is proposed to be put and, of course, there is no crèche. There is grass growing and cordoning around it, or perhaps more attractive fencing in some cases. That is the challenge. The planners have put in place a condition that a crèche be provided and these crèches, as Senator Currie highlighted, in certain cases in her constituency are not provided. While the regulations look good on paper, putting them into practice and the follow-through are not always there. It is important to acknowledge that.

In this sector, one comes across both providers and staff who have issues. I have attended briefings with SIPTU about its concerns. I met representatives of SIPTU and staff themselves who have concerns, and of course parents. The main concern that parents had was affordability issues and I acknowledge the work of the Minister and the Government on the reduction of fees. The main problem I come across now is accessibility and crèche places. It has come up on doors over the past number of months in rural areas and in my own area of Rosscahill-Oughterard, where there are providers that are full and there are waiting lists. Parents are running around trying to find places. Obviously, they have to be practical. There is no point in saying that there is place that is an hour's distance across town. Those challenges are difficult. It is somewhat similar to school places, where the Department states there are places but they are on the far side of the city. It is not practical in working parents’ routine to say they have to go an hour out of town and collect later on in the day. Those sort of things are not practicable.

The Minister and Senator Currie have acknowledged the establishment of the new supply management unit in the Department, and that is a welcome initiative. I certainly hope it works better than the forward planning section in the Department of Education, because there have been and continue to be issues there related to forward planning, whatever model it is using. Perhaps it will be easier in this sector but I do not know. It is important that model is correct. I know the forward planning unit uses the PPS, the census and all of that. I presume it is a similar sort of initiative. It is important that model be got right.

The waiting lists, as I said, are worrying. A three-year waiting list puts an undue stress on parents and it can change their lives. I say quite often in relation to many issues that not all families are the same. In some cases, people are lucky enough to have a grandparent close by or some family that might be able to assist. However, that is not always the case. All families are different. When there is a situation where we have waiting lists, that puts, as Senator Currie said, huge stress on and causes distress for parents. This obviously mainly impacts on women and mothers.

The suggestions and recommendations include updating the planning guidelines for the development of childcare facilities, which are due to be published in draft form for public consultation. They also include removing some of the loopholes related to one-bedroom apartments and strengthening the role of planning authorities. This is not just relevant to this area but the enforcement sections of planning authorities, certainly in my area, are not as strong as they should and could be. Whether that be an issue of funding, prioritisation or challenges, they need the personnel to follow up on planning applications to ensure there is delivery of what is conditioned and part of a planning application, that there is follow through and that we do not have vacant sites just left there. We have centres that are constructed but not taken up or utilised. There should be a new system involving a new model for the State to acquire or run those sorts of facilities as well so that they are not just left there. Finally, colocating childcare provision in new school developments makes sense for a whole variety of reasons. I ask that be included as a recommendation as well for the greater development of this important sector.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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I am conscious the Minister needs time to respond.

John McGahon (Fine Gael)
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I will be brief. I thank Senator Currie for arranging this debate. I wish to touch on three key areas. One is related to the planning aspects of childcare, the second is related to the experiences of childcare providers in my home town of Dundalk, and the third is a point about Senator Currie’s report she recently did about a new model.

To touch off on the planning aspect, it follows on from what Senator Kyne said his experience was in Galway. It is similar to mine. We have seen a housing explosion in parts of Dundalk town where we are building houses to beat the band. Great work is going on there. However, crèches are being provided for in the planning permission, the houses are flying up, people move into these areas and three or four years later, there are no crèches. The same goes of playing facilities, shops and all of that. It is becoming a big issue and it is taking away somewhat from the good news of how well this Government is building houses. Those are key examples where we need to make sure the facilities and community facilities we are putting into these housing developments are being followed up with as quickly as the houses are going up. I am very keen to hear the Minister’s views on how we can rectify that.

For my second point, I will segue into the provision of childcare.This results from a meeting I had with Siobhan Duffy and Maria Watters who run the Lios na nÓg childcare facility at Muirhevnamore in Dundalk. I had a two- or three-hour conversation with them a couple of weeks ago, when I obtained a real insight into some of the difficulties they face as a childcare provider. I will list two or three of the difficulties the Minister may be able to come back on in his response. The first is the financial impact. Over the past number of years, they have reduced the number of children in some of their preschool rooms at their crèche to make sure that they can still provide a good level of support to the children who are currently there. For example, a full-capacity classroom might have 22 children. Multiplying €69 by 22 gives €1,500 a week, which is approximately €57,000 per year. When they reduced the number of children to 15 to make sure that the children in the room got good-quality care and attention, that obviously cut it down from approximately €57,000 to about €39,000 a year. That is the decision they made but, naturally, other crèches may have to look at it on a financial-means basis and would not do something like that.

They also raised a pretty good point on the need for early intervention units for preschools, not just primary schools, with financial support to create these units. Their point was it could be of real benefit for children if a more specific learning process in an early intervention unit could be given.

Another issue they raised, which I have come across myself in the past couple of years, is not being able to offer staff work for the full 52 weeks of the year. In the summer, people have to try to get onto social welfare and make that transition.

The final issue is Garda vetting. This is obviously extremely important, but, unlike primary schools, the Lios na nÓg staff said that perhaps a more blanket approach to Garda vetting in early intervention would be good. In early years education, staff have to be vetted for each individual service they work in. Garda vetting is extremely important but unlike primary schools that have a more blanketed service approach - for example, the Garda vetting for the Armagh diocese covers every school within that area - when it comes to early intervention, there is no such approach. If staff want to change from one crèche to another, they need to reapply for Garda vetting on each occasion. That was a key point they made.

Those were the key points made by Siobhan and Maria. They made a number of other points but these are slightly outside of the scope of the debate, particularly those relating to the AIM programme. However, I will forward their points to the Minister's office and we can have further discussion on that.

I commend Senator Currie on her report on better planning for local childcare, which is where much of today's debate is coming from. One of the recommendations I noted that I think is important is recommendation No. 4 on the need to develop a new model for the State to acquire childcare facilities built by developers. According to the report, it is quite clear:

This new model would open up new opportunities for small to medium [term] childcare providers and community-led partnerships, fostering a supportive environment for the childcare sector. It could also act as a stepping stone to state led public childcare provision in the future.

That is very important because such childcare can act as a stepping stone we can start using now to get us towards that State-led public childcare provision in the future.

To follow on from the points made by Senator Cassells, let us look at how far we and the Department have come in the past four years in the provision of childcare. It is now affordable and more widespread than it was four years ago. Nearly €1 billion a year is being spent on it, which is more money than ever before. We have made huge progress. It is disingenuous for anyone in the Opposition to try to say anything else about it. Like everything, there is the ability to tweak things and make things that little bit better and more efficient. We are trying to do that through the motion.

Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael)
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The Minister is very welcome. I commend my colleague Senator Currie on her Private Members' motion and the work she has done over the past four years, especially in the area of childcare, in providing a report that sets out a new way and new model for childcare. It is important to acknowledge the significant investment by the Government in childcare to benefit every single family in the country. I am a father of three young kids. As a parent and a family, we receive support from the State. That is important to note, as is the further reduction in fees due to kick in for the next school year come September.

It is also important to acknowledge that we receive significant representations, particularly from those smaller providers that are struggling - some have gone out of business - with the model of funding. It seems to be slightly skewed in favour of larger scale providers being able to survive. I ask for that to be looked at and taken into account. We cannot afford to see any more smaller providers pulling out of childcare. I have seen it in the local area where I live. Only in the past month to six weeks, a childcare provider who was looking after kids after school has retired. There is no person taking over that service and we now have a situation where there is no option for parents in that area. I have engaged and spoken with a number of parents with regard to setting up an after-school facility, which is the way forward.

I was involved in starting such a facility in my community eight or nine years ago. We identified a need in the community where I live in Ballinalee. We met with the local hall committee, which I happened to be on. We have leased the hall from the local hall committee. We are located beside the school. We now have Little Learners, which is an after-school provider set up for the past eight years that provides a breakfast club and after-school care for up to 70 children five days a week. It also provides summer camps throughout the programme for kids, therefore, providing parents with that secure childcare through the summer months. I have seen and worked with various groups over the past 12 or 18 months. Many of them have approached us looking to replicate that model to provide an after-school facility in their local communities.

One of the proposals in the motion is about colocating childcare facilities on proposed primary and post-primary schools as part of their campuses. That is the way forward. Within the build for any large school that is being built, there should be a purpose-built after-school facility, or a facility within the school to drive it. There is no need to build a brand-new childcare facility to accommodate kids. That school facility is closed from 3 p.m. and throughout the summer months. We need to look at locating or colocating community childcare facilities within buildings that are owned by the State and the taxpayer. Where there are no such buildings, then build new facilities but where there are, it makes sense to do that. I ask for that to be prioritised. As I said, I am working with probably three to four groups currently. That is what they are doing. They will have the after-school facility within the school. That is the way forward. We need not look for significant capital investment for a new build but still be able to provide that after-school facility for kids.

Senator McGahon mentioned AIMS, which comes under the Minister's Department. Children are in a childcare facility for the ECCE year at three and four years of age and the Department is funding an AIMS support worker for a child with needs. There needs to be more co-ordination between education and disabilities. If a child needs support in the ECCE year, he or she should automatically need support in school. We have a situation where by the end of this year, we will have 20,000 kids on a waiting list for an assessment of needs to get into a special class in a school, when they have already been assessed as getting that AIMS support worker within ECCE. Why do we need to replicate that? All we are doing is creating longer lists.

I chaired the Joint Committee on Autism. We made a significant number of recommendations, 109 in total, to try to get supports for kids at a younger age. There is a massive opportunity in the ECCE system, which is under the Department, to get that support in for children at three and four years of age. Early intervention is key. We have support workers who we are funding. They are working with kids. They should be given the tools and knowledge to do extra occupational therapy, or speech and language therapy, for children at three and four years of age.There are a significant number of apps out there now and there is IT support that could be used to allow those access and inclusion model, AIMs, workers to work with the kids at that younger age and give them that support. My apologies for straying slightly off the topic but I felt it was important to say this. There is a massive opportunity where we have AIMs workers who are working with the kids to get that earlier intervention with kids. It will only benefit those kids in the long run. I fully support the motion and I compliment my colleague on the work she has done on this.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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I thank Senator Carrigy. Before I call the Minister, I join with others in congratulating him on his very successful election as leader of the Green Party and I wish him well. The floor is now his.

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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I thank the Acting Chair for his kind remarks. I thank Senator Currie for facilitating the debate today and, in particular, I thank her for her report on better planning for local childcare because it very usefully highlights some of the high-level planning challenges that exist at the moment. It illustrates those through case studies, many of which I am familiar with from our Dublin West constituency, and it sets out five concrete and important recommendations. I hope towards the end of my speech to speak to how I feel our Department is moving towards addressing all five of them, I hope. The Senator's remarks regarding the Minister for housing, Deputy O'Brien, being here earlier today are useful. Only one of the recommendations can be done by my Department alone and a significant number of them lie primarily with the Department of housing or with local authorities. That co-operation exists between our Department and the Department of housing and we want to continue to strengthen that.

I will speak to the high level at the start before becoming back to the specific recommendations. Senator Cassells reminded us where we were in 2020. Those of us who ran in the general election that year remember a massive demonstration in Dublin city two weeks before the vote. Parents, childcare providers and childcare professionals came together to highlight the crisis in their system. I will always recognise that, despite everything I am about to say, there are still real challenges in childcare today and we have a lot more to do, but we are in a significantly better place than where we were in 2020.

When I came into office, I set three key goals, namely, cutting the cost of childcare for parents, increasing pay for childcare professionals and ensuring sustainability for childcare providers. We have significantly advanced on all three of those key goals. Capacity is now the big challenge and we are responding to that issue as well. Some of the capacity challenge has been created as a result of making childcare more affordable, which means more parents are taking it up. That is a good thing but it creates a new challenge and we will rise to meet that particular challenge as well.

As regards meeting each of those three initial challenges, I will deal first with affordability. The combination of the fee freeze, which we will talk about more in a moment, and the two increases in the national childcare scheme, NCS, are delivering cuts in parents' fees. The first increase was on 1 January 2023 and the second will be on 2 September 2024 and they are having a very significant impact on parents. We have almost doubled the number of children using the NCS in the term of this Government, from approximately 60,000 to approximately 120,000 now. That is a huge increase in the number of children and parents benefitting from a very significant State subsidy. By linking core funding to the NCS, we have increased the number of services offering the NCS by 22%. That is why we have been able to increase the numbers because more services are offering this.

Regarding the amazing childcare professionals in this country, in September 2022 we secured for the first time a pay agreement for them with statutorily mandated levels of pay. We secured a second pay agreement in June 2024. Those basic levels of pay are still not enough, but it is an important step that was only possible because of Government intervention through an employment regulation order, ERO, and the Government actually stepping up with fund through core funding to allow services to meet the cost of that extra pay. The EROs in other sectors do not have the Government stepping up with the money but we do have that in the early years sector and we have made very significant strides. In fairness to SIPTU, the early years union, I spoke at its annual conference in March and it recognised the really important steps that have been taken to support childcare workers.

In terms of the sustainability of providers and recognising the huge diversity of provision, from community to private, from one-person services to large, multi-setting services, we have introduced core funding to create a mechanism to support that. Core funding is a really important and positive step. It is not perfect and I have never said that it is. It is important to note that core funding has changed as we go into year three. In year one, core funding was €206 million. The funding was very much linked to the number of hours a service did and the capacity or number of spaces it had. That formula automatically benefited larger services that worked for longer.

We changed that in year two having heard from the smaller services that they felt it was not recognising their particular challenges. We brought in a new rate of just over €4,000 specifically for sessional services. We brought in a floor of €8,000 below which the core funding allocation could not fall. This year, we have increased both of those figures. The sessional-only fee is €5,000 and the minimum amount any service will get in core funding this year is €14,000. It has gone from €8,000 to €14,000, a 73% increase. We have made those changes because we have grown the pot each year. It was €206 million when it was originally budgeted for, in its second year it grew to €287 million and this year, it will be €331 million. I will be doing battle in the next couple of weeks in terms of trying to grow it for year four. I always told the sector I would seek to continue to grow it.

As regards listening to the concerns that have been raised, another key change in year three is the ability to apply for a fee increase, recognising that when fees were frozen in 2022 at 2021 levels, some services had increased them in 2020, others in 2019 or 2018 and some in 2015 or 2014. There is an inequity there. We recognise that and it is why we are making this change. It may not satisfy all services this year but it is again, I believe, us recognising that core funding, though it is a good approach, is trying to meet the needs of large services. I point to the fact that many Senators have spoken to the concerns of the small services and we have also had the concerns of the biggest provider in the country. We are trying to create a system that has fairness built in but also supports the diversity of services. I have always said I want to support that diversity. Those are the steps in progress that we have been able to make.

In terms of the issue of capacity, the recommendations Senator Currie is speaking to and the work that has been ongoing within my Department, I will speak to that higher level first. At that high level, we have created the supply management unit in my Department, with the idea of forward planning for early years. I know a point was made about how it has not always worked in other areas of the education system. We have the advantage of having people in every local authority, the city and county childcare committee, CCC, who we can work with and who have that on-the-ground knowledge. The Department of Education does not really have that. The Department of Education does not really have people in place in that way. It may have them in the context of the ETBs, but they are at a higher level. We will be working closely with the CCCs and looking to influence those development plans and making sure there is an element there. That speaks to the second recommendation Senator Currie put forward. We are doing a piece of work in geo-mapping, looking at the census and where there are nought- to one-year-olds and one- to two-year-olds and overlaying that with where childcare is developed and provided for at the moment.

On the wider planning issues in terms of the planning system, there is a significant piece of work under way between my Department and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage to review the 2001 planning guidelines, which Senator Currie has set out in recommendation No. 1. Some 18 months or two years ago I had a really good meeting with planners from a number of local authorities, including Fingal and a couple of other rural and urban local authorities, to hear their cases of where the planning guidelines were not delivering. There is a big piece of work, the Planning and Development Bill, and this House has been working on it this week. We have set up an interdepartmental group between our Department and the Department of housing and we have brought in the Department of Education to try to have a better overview and look at the application and the suitability of those planning guidelines in the context of current policy and the demand we know exists. The Department of housing will send to local authorities a detailed survey looking to gain direct insight into the challenges and the problems they see with the planning guidelines at the moment. That will inform the reform of those guidelines.

One of the elements we set out when we responded to Partnership for the Public Good and the expert group was looking at the idea of public provision and whether there should be some element of it and, in particular, the idea of the State using capital funding to acquire shell buildings. It might be a lease-back model, as Senator Currie suggests in recommendation 4. It might be a direct provision to the community as well. We should be open.

Emer Currie (Fine Gael)
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It is open to both.

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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Great. That is why we have announced the €25 million for next year in terms of building blocks. That will be important. We are focusing that building blocks investment on services that will be offered to one- to three-year-olds, recognising the particular challenge at that end, even before we get into the ECCE side of things. That is where our big challenge is now.

When it comes to increasing capacity, a number of speakers spoke to the Child Care (Amendment) Bill, which we discussed in the Seanad just a couple of weeks ago. Bringing childminders within our wider infrastructure is important, in particular doing so in a way that supports the parents who choose to use childminders, allowing them benefit from the same cuts in fees that parents using centre-based childcare have experienced, but putting in place regulations that are appropriate. Just yesterday, there was a workshop between officials in my Department and childminders that Childminding Ireland had picked to go through the draft childminding regulations.

Co-location and the use of public buildings have come up a lot. Senators are probably all aware, and this speaks to recommendation 5, that the Minister, Deputy Foley, recently published new procedures on the use of school property and school sports facilities outside of school hours. That has strengthened the hand of schools to partner with childcare providers, particularly after-school ones. There is maybe an incentive there in that there is clarity that any income derived from that will not be taken away from the school and that the school will not be disadvantaged because of that. That is important.

As regards recommendation 1, as well as the planning guidelines, Senator Currie spoke about the technical guidance for local authorities and what they should ask of a developer when they are mandated to put in place a childcare service, that it is not a three-bedroom house that miraculously looks like all the other three-bedroom houses in the area. We have the universal design guidelines for early learning and childcare settings. They provide detailed technical information on the design of different types of settings and are drafted in such a way as to ensure inclusion for all. Training and resources are being developed by the Department in terms of their applicability to local authorities. They are not mandatory; they are guidelines. Maybe that is something we need to look at. We would hope that local authorities would take account of those in terms of the asks.

We are advancing the work on a State early learning and childcare agency. That will be important in providing greater structure in the area. There is a programme oversight board delivering that at the moment.

We have achieved a significant amount in this sphere over the past four years and, as a Government, we can be proud of what we have achieved. There continue to be very real challenges. Ireland started really investing in early years only in 2008 to 2009, when ECCE came in. That was our first real State investment in this area. Any comparison with other European countries has to bear that in mind. We are playing catch-up. When I came into office, our annual investment was €638 million per year. This year, it will be €1.1 billion, and that will grow in budget 2025. We have absolutely prioritised that investment. A couple of people talked about whether this should be in this Department or in the Department of Education. I do not know if that same prioritisation could have happened if it were within a wider Department. We should never be dogmatic as to how Departments work. The great team here in the Department is focused on early learning and care, on getting the very best for parents, childcare professionals and providers and, ultimately, on looking to benefit babies and children across our country.

I thank Senator Currie. This has been a very useful discussion. I hope I have been able to demonstrate how we are moving on many of these areas. I am happy to continue to engage with Senators. I will ask my officials to study Senator Currie's report closely to see if there are other pieces we can take from it in honing our approach going forward.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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I thank the Minister for his comprehensive response to the debate. I invite Senator Currie to respond.

Emer Currie (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister for his comprehensive response. You always leave something out whenever you make your initial contribution. I should have been clearer that when I spoke about leasing back to providers, I was not saying this should involve only private providers, but I do feel they are under financial pressure and this would alleviate that. Core funding is working to increase stability and capacity, but there are lots of trusted, experienced providers that want to expand their services into new buildings and units, and this would assist them. It says very clearly in the report that this model would open up new opportunities for small to medium-sized childcare providers and community-led partnerships, fostering a supportive environment for the childcare sector. It would also act as a stepping stone to State-led public childcare provision in the future. We can have a debate about public, State-led childcare or private childcare. This would facilitate a hybrid model, and that is rooted in the reality of people needing childcare in their communities. I like to think that, when I come to the House, I do so with common-sense, achievable, practical solutions in the now, not just reflecting an ideological position.

What the Minister has said is great. I would be happy with the proposal of a State model of acquisition and lease back of early learning and childcare facilities to be included as part of the Department's work. There is, however, an urgency to this. I think we all agree on that. My colleagues agree on it across the House. I know the Minister is working on the bigger picture, but what can be done now? The exemptions in respect of one-bedroom apartments could be ended now. I refer to the guidance for local authorities that I have met. My reports and the work I do are evidence-based. I have consulted planners in Fingal and others areas, and the technical guidance is not mandatory. I accept what Senator Cassells said about Meath county childcare committee but, as I said initially, there is inconsistency across the country as to how closely county childcare committees work together, especially as regards referrals of planning applications and their input. I think we could strengthen the county childcare committees. They do very valuable work. That is something we could move on now. We could skill up our local authorities. Again, we could do that now. Perhaps the Minister would consider things we can do now and I ask that there be an opportunity for public consultation on the planning guidelines.

After-school services are an issue for us as well in Dublin West. We need to go further than the Minister for Education's guidelines.I would like to see something similar to the sports capital grant whereby the Department has a programme and offers capital grants to schools. Schools can use the building during the day and the Department can use it for after-school care. That would be a good step forward. Certain schools have just shut off the idea of after-school care but that would be a good carrot.

The issue of core funding has come up a lot today. I am not in the space of saying childcare is a high-profit sector, that people are not in trouble and it is up to them if they want to withdraw from core funding. I am also not saying it is completely loss-making for everybody and that there is no hope. I really believe in the model the Minister has come up with. It is a great model but there are just too many providers at the moment, of varying sizes, that are struggling. Continued engagement with them will really assist so that they feel heard. The point was made that there has been a 15% increase, but some providers are telling me they are only getting between 2.5% and 7%. A 61-page document for core funding landed with them and they feel this is an example of excessive paperwork and administration. The rates of pay for their staff have gone up to €17 per hour, an increase of 40% over the past five years. They are facing rising costs for things such as sick pay, breastfeeding breaks and so on. All of the costs that affect other industries are also affecting childcare and it is only right the Minister's Department gets the necessary funding. As the Minister has said, we have come a long way. He spoke about €1 billion in advance of 2028 but he has our support to ask for more to safeguard the vital services parents depend on. Parents are putting the names of children they have not yet had on waiting lists and are paying €600 in non-refundable deposits. They are scared about three-year waiting lists and are literally basing their life, career and household budget decisions around childcare. Let us make sure we continue to deliver for them and work with our invaluable providers in the sector.