Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank colleagues from all sides of the House who raised this important topic, the care of our children under five years of age and the services they attend. It is the first time we have had such a focused debate on this age group and that speaks for itself.

Obviously, I regret what has precipitated this debate. I agree with what my colleagues had to say about the scenes we all saw last night. The images were harrowing, distressing, shocking and absolutely unacceptable. We saw poor practice and the dereliction of duty and care resulting in the mistreatment of young children that bordered on abuse. It was extremely distressing to watch. I concur with the comments made. It is striking that when our children begin in primary school at five years of age, the inspection regime, the curriculum, focus, teacher and mentor support are all in place to a much greater degree than is the case in this sector. It has happened in other countries but it has not happened here and that is the task that faces us. Those are the issues we must address.

I will try to respond to as many comments as possible. The Child Care (Pre-School Services) Regulations 2006 are the basis on which the HSE carries out preschool inspections. Clearly, the incidents shown last night would appear to constitute serious breaches of those very regulations. We need stronger and more robust inspections which take account of quality to a far greater degree than the current regime and we need stronger sanctions. I certainly concur with the points made on that. If we take the current regulations, such as regulation 5 on the care and development of young children, and regulation 9 on managing the behaviour of young children in these centres, we can see they were not adhered to as intended.

That goes without saying.

As Members probably will be aware, the practices witnessed and the centres that were the subject of the programme are also the subject of a thorough and comprehensive investigation under way by both the Garda and the HSE. All such instances of mistreatment of children in child-care settings should be reported to authorities. It does not need statutory reporting. That is essential and necessary under the current guidelines but, obviously, obligatory reporting strengthens that provision. Clearly, under the current guidelines, any instances of abuse of children or instances bordering on abuse of children where there are concerns should be reported.

It should be noted that the children in last night's report appeared to be younger than the preschool cohort and in that programme there is no evidence of poor practice in relation to that cohort. Last night's report would obviously make us extremely sensitive to examining and investigating continuously what precisely happens during the course of the early childhood care and education, ECCE scheme.

I alert Deputies to the fact that Pobal investigates the ECCE scheme on a yearly basis and we have an annual report since we began that only last year. We now have a cohort of information about compliance across the sector. There are some statistics I will share with Deputies. The issue of qualifications has been raised a good deal. For the first time ever, as I stated, last year we collected information on this cohort. For example, the number of staff qualified at FETAC level has risen, from 70% in 2010 to 86.5% in 2012, and 86.5% of staff are now qualified up to level 5 in these settings. That is important information. We have demanded higher standards in training for the leaders in the ECCE programmes, and 98% of those have level 5 or above. There is continuous improvement but there is no room for complacency.

Some Deputies raised the issue of mandatory qualifications. For the new contracts and new regulations in September, I am examining increasing the level of qualification which ought to be in place for staff who are employed within the sector.

The matters addressed in last night's programme deserve and demand a comprehensive response. We should discuss them at greater length on another occasion in order that we can comprehensively discuss the range of issues that have been raised on this occasion under the Topical Issues debate format.

Parents need to be reassured that their young children, whether in child care services, crèche or wherever, are protected and cared for. As a number of Deputies stated, there are many examples of high quality practice in this country. We do not want to create panic in every parent in the country about the standard of services which are being provided for their children, but we need to be vigilant. Parents themselves are vigilant. Parents are not powerless in this situation. As some Deputies suggested, we want to encourage parents. What parents should do is go to their providers and ask questions if they are concerned. They should ask to see inspection reports, which are available. New inspection reports will be available online in a number of weeks. On the inspection reports already done, there was a substantial piece of work in providing those as well. Something we need to do which has not been done to date is to analyse all the reports. We need to see the messages from the inspection reports from around the country.

The HSE has informed me that there will be a website available shortly outlining what prosecutions have taken place so that parents will have access to that information. Today, I spoke to Mr. Gordon Jeyes about bringing the findings together and analysing them by sector - private sector, not-for-profit sector, community sector - to see what we can learn from the inspection reports that have been done. Deputies will be surprised to hear that, like many issues in relation to children in this country, we did not have these national data. We do not have a national approach to inspections. I have asked Mr. Jeyes to ensure we adopt that national approach. That will ensure inspection staff can be redeployed in a flexible manner to deal with some of the gaps, and a number of inspectors are being recruited.

There were quite a number of other issues raised which I will not have the opportunity to respond to right now, but perhaps I will have an opportunity when I respond after the Deputies have spoken.

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