Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister’s response and the fact that he shares my view of the educational role of preschool facilities. I appreciate he is reading himself into his brief. Nevertheless, I appeal to him because this is a question of quality child care provision, one of the key components of which is resourcing when resources are under a great deal of strain. Will the Minister consider the exemption of preschool child care facilities from commercial rates? This has been lobbied for over a long period. It would be another means of ensuring that more of the moneys earmarked for preschool child care provision would be spent at the coal-face of service provision. Will the Minister look favourably on this argument?

This is the appropriate time to make such a case to his colleagues at the Cabinet table, or to the Minister for Finance as the case may be. I bring to his attention that the county authority in my home base, Monaghan County Council, with the support of his party colleagues, unanimously passed a motion making that appeal in recent months. Without making a distinction between the State, the community or private provision, it is about the child in the first instance and I would greatly appreciate the Minister taking up that argument.

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