Ciara Conway (Waterford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and the other witnesses for attending. I wish to pick up on a number of points in the presentation of Early Childhood Ireland. While this meeting is taking place because of what we saw happening in preschools throughout the country, are people aware that the after-school sector that covers children aged four, five and six is completely unregulated and uninspected, and in some cases those involved do not even require Garda clearance? Is this another scandal that is waiting to unfold? We need to be proactive regarding after-school provision. There is no training available for people involved in the after-school sector. A FETAC model for after-school provision was developed, but for some reason it has not been included in this round of FETAC training for child care workers. That is a scandal that needs immediate action rather than waiting for another "Prime Time Investigates" programme.

As a public body, I imagine that RTE was duty bound to make a child protection or welfare referral as soon as it got the information. Based on the timeline Mr. Jeyes provided, it first made contact on 29 March but failed to make a child protection or welfare referral. Did RTE make one? If it did not, the committee should ask RTE to provide us with its reasons for not doing so. It is imperative that we get that information as soon as it is known to a person. As citizens of this country, we are duty bound to make referrals. This committee had lengthy meetings on the heads of the Children First Bill, involving, I understand, representatives of the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, because we asked representatives of all Departments to attend as they all have responsibility in the protection of our children. I would like to know the position in that regard.

What commitment does the Government really have to the Síolta and Aistear programmes? They have been around for a long time and have been piloted but never fully implemented. The recent service level agreement between Pobal and the service providers now places a requirement on child care providers to become compliant with Síolta. I am talking about people who provide the free preschool year, certificates or subvention. Heretofore they did not need to have Síolta implemented in the setting, which is not good enough.

The county and city child care committees provide infrastructure. However, I understand there is not always a good reporting relationship between preschool officers and the county or city child care committees. A preschool officer could unearth something but it is very unclear as to whether he or she is allowed to share that information with a county or city child care committee. That is nonsense and needs to be addressed here and now. It is an abhorrence that one arm of the Government can determine that a particular facility is not fit but that information is not being shared with another arm of the Government which is then recommending that facility to parents. It needs to be stamped out straight away.