Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the opportunity to raise this issue to ensure sufficient financial resources will be in place so people on community employment schemes in County Laois who are currently working in child care can undertake training to improve their qualifications so as to continue working in this area. Recently I was contacted by a child care facility in County Laois, Jelly Tots in Abbeyleix. It is a crèche and play-school and it has been an outstanding facility for a number of years. It is a community child care facility, not a privately run facility. Those who have been working there for a number of years have been community employment scheme participants. In total, approximately nine people were involved working in Jelly Tots as part of the community employment scheme.

Recently, all child care-related community employment in County Laois has been centralised under Laois Partnership. That is fine and it happened on 3 March. I have no issue with the centralisation and with having the various community employment schemes all under the one central scheme in County Laois. This works well and there are approximately 30 people involved. I am sure the centralised scheme is very good and has a clear focus. It is not the case that the supervisor is dealing with tidy towns and then with community child care facilities, as can happen. The facility in question is dedicated to child care. It is a good idea to have a clear focus. The scheme is well run.

The difficulty is that the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Frances Fitzgerald, introduced new legislation to ensure everybody working in child care must have a FETAC qualification at level 5 to work in child care in 2015. This is the nub of the issue. The staff in question have been working in child care but now are required to have a qualification at FETAC level 5. This, too, is welcome. I appreciate it and it is a good, positive step because we want to ensure the best people are looking after our children. This ties in with the children's referendum we held some time ago with a view to putting greater emphasis on children. It is important that people working in child care have all the knowledge and training required. However, it has now arisen in County Laois that those staff currently working in this area who do not have the FETAC level 5 qualification must be trained to that level. Some in Laois already have that qualification. While Pobal has a learner fund, it excludes community employment participants because Pobal is publicly funded and there is a training budget in the community employment scheme. If the latter were used along with the funding of Pobal, this would be regarded as double funding. Therefore, the staff are not eligible to avail themselves of the Pobal learner fund, which presents a particular difficulty.

The community employment scheme authorities, which have very limited training funds, want to use that funding to train the staff with level 4 qualifications up to level 5. In the Abbeyleix scheme, perhaps four of the nine staff need the additional FETAC training. I am not sure of the figures pertaining to the scheme right across the county under Laois Partnership.

Early Childhood Ireland has no course in Laois. The point is that while it is running the courses around the country, it did not run one in County Laois. I asked locals whether they had tried to get onto a scheme in a neighbouring county and they stated they tried Thurles and Kildare only to find there were no spaces available. We have good trainers in County Laois to carry out the training required. I understand, although I have not had it verified, that the Laois County Childcare Committee has applied to be a trainer to provide the facility but I believe no definite word has been given on this. It could serve as one possibility of allowing the training to happen in County Laois.

See this speech in context