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

I welcome the opportunity to speak to Project Ireland 2040. I hope I will be as good as Deputy Heydon and get in as many of my local areas as possible. It is the second time he did it today. He did it already with the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Zappone, when he was discussing family resource centres. I will approach Project Ireland 2040 from two perspectives with the first being as spokesperson on children and youth affairs for Fianna Fáil.

I have gone through the plan in depth and I am disappointed. When we were talking about everything that was going to be invested in schools, I was looking at the mirror of what was going to be done with child care facilities. We are looking at population growth of the order of 1 million people in the next number of years. I looked for funding to support urban and rural communities to develop private or community child care facilities but all I can see popping up at me on drilling down into the plan is the €6.8 million which was already put in place and increased this year. When one applies that among the 26 city and county child care facilities nationally, that equates to €221,000 per annum. When one divides that further according to the seven tiers of capital funding for which private and community child care facilities can apply, some will get €50,000 and some will get €20,000 and some might be able to amalgamate the two. In Galway, for example, where there are 225 child care facilities providing full-day services, that means approximately seven projects will be successful. Nationally, that means seven projects per county will come through on an annual basis, which is disappointing given that counties like Cavan, Monaghan and Leitrim are already at 97% capacity and will be looking for capital investment. We are not talking capital investment of €50,000 or €20,000 in these cases but about €1.2 million or €1.3 million projects to build the centres of excellence required. Child care services are already being provided in portacabins outside Carrickmacross. There are a number of child care providers looking for investment nationally, including in Kerry or at Mountbellew in Deputy Eugene Murphy's constituency where there are capacity issues right now. To get its service over the line, that provider needs €180,000 to put on an extra room to cater for the 26 children who are already using a room in a local national school. Those rooms can be also used for aftercare. In that regard, €50,000 is not a great deal of money. I use that as a particular example.

It would be disingenuous to fail to acknowledge the major projects in health and for hospitals. The position for every child who will need access to hospitals locally is laid out clearly. However, in relation to the replacement and refurbishment of the 90 community nursing homes nationally, not one community child care facility was acknowledged in the plan. A planning application has already been submitted on the Portiuncula ward block. A lot of people are wondering where it is at. It is already on the map. Page 92 of the plan refers to disability services and states that the NDP will continue to support the capital programme for people with disabilities. I am disappointed it did not refer to "people and children with disabilities". On page 93 of the National Development Plan, child care investment projects are set out and reference is made to ensuing equality and supply of sufficient child care spaces. Yet again, there is no mention of the buildings child care facilities will use. The plan refers to the youth services to support and target disadvantaged young people. We already have a very good DEIS programme but we are still talking about the schools completion programme which was there under previous Governments. While the programme is excellent, it needs investment. That can be done here and now and does not need to be under a national plan.

The continued development of ICT and standards for Tusla are mentioned. Anyone who listens to questions from me to the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Zappone, every month will know that ICT in Tusla is critical. We have had many cases in the past 12 months, including the Molly case and the Grace case, and we all know it was down to paperwork. Unless we have in place the proper infrastructure for people to do their day's work, we are at nothing. There must be accountability and traceability and we must invest in technology. We should not be talking just about technology today, we should be talking about upgrading it and moving away from the pen and paper. Oberstown has been on the agenda since I arrived in the House. Only €1 million was left to be spent there this year. One questioned in the beginning whether it was a suitable site because it was being governed by the OPW. It is down to doors at this stage, I understand. I wonder why Oberstown is still on the agenda. I spoke about the €6.8 million which does not hit the mark at all.

I said at the outset that I would approach this from two perspectives. I was going to speak as a spokesperson for the first half of my contribution and then get parochial for the second half. The Minister, Deputy Naughten, will be glad to be here to hear about the parochial.

See this speech in context