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

This is good news for the people in County Laois who are involved under the Laois Community and Enterprise Development Company Limited, to give it its full formal title, although I use the local title I am used to dealing with. I had said there are approximately 30 places on the scheme, and I am pleased the Minister of State has confirmed there will now be 50 CE places. That is quite an undertaking and makes it quite a large scheme. It is good that it should be centralised in the county and I want to acknowledge everything the Minister of State has said so far, which tallies exactly with the information I have been given. There are 33 places for the direct provision of child care and 17 places are allocated for child care support. The most important sentence from the Minister of State, which I will repeat, is: "An additional training budget to facilitate the completion of the full major award at level 5 in child care will be made available." That is good news. If the news was not good, I was going to ask whether there were any other mechanisms in the Department through some other schemes that could in some way be dovetailed to work with it, but in view of that good response, I am happy that this is no longer necessary.

It was unfortunate that one or two people had commenced this when the funding ran out. So long as the funding and the training programme are in place and people are able to get their qualifications, I do not have a fixation as to whether this training is delivered through the Laois Community and Enterprise Development Company, through the Laois County Childcare Committee or through the organisation Early Childhood Ireland, as it is not my affair to interfere with that, no more than it is the Minister of State's. The essence of all of this is to make sure we have suitably qualified people in the area of child care from 2015. I appreciate the good news that funding will be made available to complete this training.

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