Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for her response. I tabled this question because a number of community child care providers have contacted me. As the Minister will be aware, a number of meetings regarding this issue have been held, particularly in the south of the country. I asked the Minister for Social Protection a few weeks ago to indicate the number of workers participating on community employment schemes in a child care setting and he replied that at the end of December 2016, the number was 1,816 participants. That did not include Tús workers. While they would not be engaged in trying to get a FETAC level 5 qualification, the participants on that scheme were possibly taken in under a ratio. A total of 800 participants were sponsored by child care providers. The number of such participants in the rural social scheme, RSS, is 41. As the Minister will be aware from her contact with child care providers, they have relied on those numbers. The child care providers have not received funds. If the €1 million fund was divvied out among the more than 1,800 participants, it would not sustain a month's wages for them. Therefore, there is a crisis in the sector.

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