Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have never been brief in my life. Everything about the national childcare scheme has been said. I accept that it replaced community childcare subvention plus, CCSP. There was an element of universality and there was not the sponsorship issue and all the rest of it. The Government accepted that. That is why this got kicked down the road for two years. I will not get into the ins and outs of which Minister then kicked it into action just before the last general election. We are where we are. In fairness, the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, has dealt with me on the issue. A number of providers in my constituency are impacted by it, whether that is the service in Moneymore, Drogheda, the team project in Muirhevnamore, The House - Cox's Demesne or a number of other providers. We have failed to put early intervention structures in place over many years. We have also failed to deal with intergenerational deprivation.

This childcare model was working in a number of places. We have now broken it. I accept the Minister has a review in process, and that is brilliant.

If that review is to look specifically at DEIS funding, then happy days. If we can take a particular pot of money to deal with these sort of interventions that is great, but at this point in time we are where we are. I understand that there are a number of referrals, that is in respect of the Department of Justice and the councils in very specific sets, and then there is Tusla. For most of the groups who have thought about using Tusla, it is a workaround. I would be quite happy if we could get away with that workaround. I understand most families do not want to touch Tusla. There is probably an element of early interventions that should be removed from the same name as Tusla in its other role, that is when it is dealing with acute situations. This is something that we have to look at into the future.

We are where we are and Tusla is a means of referral. I know that a number of groups were looking at possibly creating a meitheal and not wanting a full case with Tusla and the problem is that a directive has not come from Government, nor has a directive then come from Tusla to the groups as to how that roadmap would work. I accept that it is imperfect but if we could do that until we see the outworkings of the review process, which I would like to think would put specific funding in place, we could then put a better model on the ground. I am in agreement that Tusla is far from the body one would want to deal with as to referrals, but as I repeat myself, we are where we are and we need to get this interim solution in place so that organisations like these, and Hidden Treasures, Lios na nÓg and others in my constituency, do not go to the wall and that we do not fail the children who have failed to get into these groups in the past while