Alan Farrell (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

How do I summarise in 90 seconds what we all witnessed last night? It is near impossible, but what we witnessed on the video footage was a fundamental breach of trust in terms of the most vulnerable people in our society by those turning a profit. The individuals responsible, and all child care professionals, should be in this area because it is a calling, they have a basic love of children, and they want to nurture and educate those children for the many hundreds of thousands of parents who are unable to do so for a short period every day.

Qualification should be mandatory for every individual who works in a crèche or child-minding facility, and those individuals should be thoroughly vetted and monitored on an ongoing basis because parents must have confidence in them. Some Deputies mentioned the crèches still operating today. Parents must have confidence in those facilities in terms of the care of their children.

If they cannot have that confidence, something is wrong with the system we oversee. All of this must be related in some way to the ongoing funding of such facilities. If we are funding them as a State, even though they are clearly in breach of the guidelines issued by the HSE, the funding must be stopped to ensure they adhere to those standards.

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