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Childcare: a Commitment to Family and Community Support
Introduction
The Green Party believes that childcare is about caring for children as individuals
whose rights must be respected. The Green Party's policy on childcare is about
children. It is about providing good quality care and choice. This policy also seeks to
ensure a consistently high standard of care at a price that families can afford, where
they need it. It is only by focusing on children's needs and meeting them that we can
safeguard our future economic welfare.
Our policy responds to children's needs for nurturing, play, education and respect. We
envisage crèche, child-minding and preschool facilities in locations most appropriate to the
needs of the child. To ensure the coordination of childcare services the Green Party will
place the care of children under the remit of a new Government Department, dedicated to
providing for the needs of children and young people.
Parents and guardians are best placed to judge the kind of care that is most appropriate for
their children. That is why we will provide resources directly to parents to help them make
the best choice for their children.
Supporting
affordable, community based childcare centres
The Green Party will increase
the State's role in providing childcare in community-based centres. These Centres are
best placed close to home in locations that are adjacent to parks or open spaces that will
be accessible to children in the course of the day. These would ultimately become Children's
Centres, offering a high quality range of services to parents and carers, including crèche,
pre-school, after-school and out-of-school care, parent and toddler groups, parenting
courses, adult education and medical clinics.
Currently, community childcare
providers are faced with too much administration to access what is often very restricted, ad
hoc funding. Financial support for such providers should be increased and its administration
streamlined. Current decisionmaking processes for grant applications need to be reevaluated
due to long delays encountered at local level.
The Green Party would strengthen the role of the 33 City and County Childcare Committees giving them the
authority to decide upon and administer funding allocations with a view to permitting quicker
decisions on applications. This
would also allow greater scope for local assessment of needs and direct intervention for
provision.
Giving parents choice
At the core of the Green Party's policy on childcare is the commitment that each family will receive a Direct Parenting
Allowance in the form of a refundable tax credit. This will help parents who want to take the option of staying at home for the early years of
their child's life. In the medium term the Green Party will work towards combining this new Refundable Parenting Tax Credit with
existing Child Benefit and other forms of family support payments, such as the Family Income Supplement, to help bring about a wagetype
payment for stay-at-home parents.
In addition, the Green Party recognises the particular importance of
helping both parents to be with their children during the first year of their lives. To facilitate this, we will increase the period of Maternity
Benefit, and provide for Parental Benefit and mandatory Paternal Benefit on a 'use it or lose it' basis.
Quality of care
The existing Childcare Regulations will be revised to include reference to how the children spend their time. It will also become
mandatory that all childminders will follow a State recognised training programme. We will implement the National Quality Framework for
Early Childhood Education. In addition we will ensure that the Early
Learning Framework, once finalised is widely available and promoted.
Recognising childminders
Eighty per cent of children in full time day care are cared for by
childminders.
This form of paid childcare is flexible, and represents good
value for families and the taxpayer.
The work of childminders is largely unregulated by the State,
as they are only obliged to notify the local Health Services Executive if they are minding four
or more children under the age of six. We want all childminders to be registered, to have greater
training and support opportunities and to be entitled to a tax-free allowance per child minded.
Extended family members acting as childminders will also be entitled to this tax-free allowance.
Training will be provided for all childminders.
Delivering pre-school education
Most children benefit from at least one year of pre-school education
after the age of three. This is particularly the case for children from
disadvantaged backgrounds, and for the increasing numbers of
children who have few places to play in their communities.
The Green Party will make one year's free preschool education, in the
year before the child starts school, a right for all children. Provision of
this year of education will be delivered in full consultation with existing
early-years childcare providers.
The following are key actions that we will implement to give parents choice in childcare: -
• Introduce a Refundable Parenting Tax Credit - €150 per month tax credit
per child from birth until the child enters pre-school and €100 from when the
child is in pre-school until the age of 12. As a refundable tax credit, it would
be available as a cash payment if the parent were not in paid employment.
• Increase Maternity Benefit from 18 weeks to 26 weeks.
• Introduce a statutory right to six months Parental Benefit, to be taken in the
child's first year, and available to either parent.
• Extend paid Paternity Benefit to two weeks.
• Increase child benefit to €155.92 for the first and second child and €192.85
for the third and subsequent children per month in line with Government
commitments. Child Benefit will be made universal and will be index-linked.
• Initiate free and universal pre-school education of 3.5 hours, five days a
week for all children in the year before they go to school.
• Fully reinstate, as an interim measure, the Crèche Supplement and VTOS
childcare supports, as these cutbacks have caused severe hardship to
parents and children in disadvantaged communities.
• Replace the current Equal Opportunities Childcare Programme with a new
five-year capital, staffing and quality control grant programme that is solely
aimed at supporting community-based childcare providers and childminders.
Particular attention would be given to the following reforms:
- Getting rid of restrictions encountered by service providers when applying
for grant assistance for part-time services and drop-in facilities.
- Allocating specific grant assistance for administrative costs.
- Fast-tracking grant allocations for RAPID and CLÁR regions.
- Strengthening the role of childcare committees.
• Recognise care-work as a job so that carers can build up a social insurance
record in order to qualify for a full contributory pension.
• Introduce a tax-free allowance of €5000 per child per childminder for up to
three children. Enhanced quality control, access to training and grant support
will be delivered by the new city and county committees and a more
comprehensive system of childminders advisory officers.
• Give the responsibility for the
entire childcare sector to the Department of Social and Family Affairs with the aim of transferring
the sector to a new Department of
Youth and Children.
• Create a central fund for all childcare provision subsidies to facilitate service providers. This
would involve amalgamating current funding, including funding
from the Health Service Executive, EOCP, FÁS, dormant accounts
and the young people's facilities and services fund.
• Give greater support to organisations and schemes such as the Community Mothers
schemes, the La Leche League and IPPA, the Early Childhood Organisation that give vital support
to families in the early years of children's lives
These are provisional annual costings for our proposals
Refundable ParentingTax Credit
€400M
Increase Maternity Benefit to 26 weeks
€61M
Six months Parental Leave
€199M
Two weeks Paternity Leave
€15M
Child Benefit
€192M
Reformed EOCP
€100M
Pre-School Provision
€136M
Crèche Supplement VTOS support
€10M
Increased Finance for Supporting Organisations €7M
Total
€1,120M
Family Scenarios*
A dual-income family with two children aged three and eleven
years.
The Refundable Parenting Tax Credit will allow for €3000/€250 to be
taken off their annual/monthly tax bill. They will receive Child Benefit
payments totalling €3742.08/€311.84 annually/monthly.
A dual-income family with three children aged twelve years,
three years and two months.
The Refundable Parenting Tax Credit will allow for €4800/€400 to be
taken off their annual/monthly tax bill. They will receive Child Benefit
payments totalling €6056.28/504.69 annually/monthly. The mother is on
Maternity Leave and based on an average rate of maternity benefit she
will receive €5389.80 for 26 weeks. Should herself or her husband
decide to take the further entitlement of six months parental leave they
could expect to receive the equivalent amount of €5389.90 for the
period.
A single income family with two children, aged one and four years.
The Refundable Parenting Tax Credit will allow for €3000/€250
annually/monthly to be claimed as a cash payment/credit. They will
receive Child Benefit of €3742.08/€311.84 annually/monthly. The child
aged four is attending a year of pre-school free of charge.
A family with no income and one child aged two
The Refundable Parenting Tax Credit will allow for €1800/€150
annually/monthly to be claimed as a cash payment. They will receive
Child Benefit of €1871.04/€155.92 annually/monthly
Childminders
A childminder who is taking care of two children will be able to earn up
to €10,000 without paying tax. He or she will be able to build up an
insurance record by entering the tax system and will be able to avail
avail of enhanced training and support networks.
* These scenarios outline the impact of the Refundable Parenting Tax
Credit, Child Benefit rates, extended maternity and parental benefit on the
finances of four families.
The Green Party / Comhaontas Glas
16/17 Suffolk Street, Dublin 2
Tel: 01 6790012
Fax: 01 6797168
Email: info@greenparty.ie
Web: www.greenparty.ie
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