Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

At the outset, as I always do, I acknowledge what I perceive to be a whole ministerial activity that by its nature deals with vulnerable people or people who need the State to intervene on their behalf, whether it is the early years with sector, disabilities, or those people who find themselves in temporary accommodation or who are from other countries. We in my party have always tried to approach this from a non-partisan point of view and try to be as supportive as possible. We fully acknowledge that there has been a significant increase in budget across a number of sectors in the last years. That has to be acknowledged. While we acknowledge this, there are challenges whether it is in the disability sector or certainly in the early years sector. With that in mind I just have a few short questions.

On the early years sector - and I tend to drill down into bread and butter issues - there is an issue around the financial reporting mechanism for the early years sector at present. We had a very good engagement with the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman's, officials here last week. To be fair they were very forthright with us. I felt it was a very good engagement and I felt there was an understanding by Department officials of the challenges that are faced by early years providers around the current requirements under the core funding model to report financially. It is my understanding that possibly within the last 24 hours a further missive or communication has gone out to providers. I have literally only just had sight of a copy of one such missive. My question will follow but I just want to quote from it:

These essential data will inform the allocation model for year 3 of Core funding as well as our preparations for the next Estimates process, ensuring we can continue to make progress on our shared objectives of affordable, quality, inclusive and sustainable early learning and childcare services. We appreciate your understanding [this is to the providers] and patience as we finalise updated financial reporting requirements in conjunction with ELSCF members and nominees.

I want to get a read-out from the Minister as to where that sits at the moment. I certainly felt from the last committee hearings that there was a sympathy and empathy towards the providers such that the Department was going to try to retrofit or come up with some sort of solution there. I am speaking for those providers who are arguably small sole traders that have been in the sector for decades in some cases. Perhaps the Minister could give us words of comfort to allow for some headroom to be given to those people who are under the cosh at the moment because they are incurring increased costs as they must go back to their accountants again. They are finding it very difficult and very stressful. If the Minister can give us some words of comfort, we would be grateful for that. This is my first point.