Sandra McLellan (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and Mr. McKiernan for their presentations. I also welcome the representatives of the Child and Family Agency for its first presentation to this committee. From the Minister's reply to a parliamentary question from Deputy Ó Caoláin, I noted that the transition has been successful. I want to wish the agency's staff well in the job that has been entrusted to them.

The documentary, A Breach of Trust, shocked the nation to the core. It was a wake-up call for all of us and we knew that a number of actions had to be taken to ensure that nothing like this could ever happen again. To prepare for today's meeting, I googled "A Breach of Trust" last night and read all the headline comments. I will touch on the actions that we were told needed to be taken. The first recommendation was to have more robust inspections. I am glad to see that the Minister has provided €500,000 for this and that eight positions are ready to be filled. When will we have enough inspectors? Following the documentary some crèches sought inspections because they knew they would be put online and wanted to be categorised as good crèches. However, they could not get such inspections and were told that some counties only had one inspector so it would not happen.

The second point was that crèche inspection reports should be put online and I know that that is in train. I wonder, however, if all crèches have been inspected at this stage. If not, how near are we to accomplishing that?

When she introduced the legislation, which we all supported, the Minister covered the registration system which is welcome.

The next item that arose was having better qualified staff, which has also been covered in the legislation. In addition, the question arose about very low-paid workers and the lack of promotional opportunities, yet a lot of these crèches are very profitable. I am not sure how we can address this matter. As we can see, the Minister has done a lot of good work because many of these issues have been addressed.

I welcome the introduction of a new national quality support service for early years' service that is coming in train. The new regulations will be accompanied by national quality standards in the coming months, which is also welcome.

There are huge problems concerning delays in Garda vetting so how can we overcome those delays? The Minister has been doing a good job and she has come a long way in the six months since the launch of this child care initiative. I wish her well with the rest of it.