Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will bring up a number of issues and look for ministerial and departmental engagement.

First, I want to talk about the Muirhevnamor Community Youth Project after-school service. I asked for the information so I will provide it as it was provided to me.

We are a community based Afterschool Service in a large urban housing estate in a disadvantaged area [of Dundalk]. The Afterschool Service is based in what was originally a local authority house within the estate.

The Afterschool operates its service from 1.15pm – 6.15pm in normal times.

Current numbers [are] 24 ... capacity [is] 27 [but we] can't increase [this] due to staffing issues [and there are] currently 14 on a waiting list.

I am talking about projects that do huge work with really disadvantaged kids. Not all the kids are referrals; it is probably due to the efforts that are put in by these projects that they are not.

As regards staffing issues, at this point the after-school service requires two part-time staff. It currently relies on CE staff. Obviously, that is not perfect from the project's point of view or even that of those on CE, of which there is no uptake at the minute. The service states that "Core Funding restricts fee increases", but the reality is that the cost-of-living crisis does too. Sometimes, for those who pay fees, this project would accept them being paid very slowly and not necessarily weekly or monthly. The service further states:

We operate 2 school collections daily at both local schools within the estate at 1.15pm and 2.15pm. This demands 3 or 4 members of staff to be out of the building at the one time. Therefore going forward we are looking at this collection service to be inoperable.

We need action on this.

The Minister visited the House, in Cox's Demesne. It also has an after-school project. It is in a better circumstance than most "as we share the building with other projects and admin, management fees are shared as are running costs". It continues:

Basically we have a capacity of 32 and are full with a waiting list of 40. [That is the reality of what this project could offer.]

...

The difficulties we are encountering is the excessive paperwork. We ... are wondering why we couldn’t have a Service Level Agreement that would encompass everything as we do with Tusla and Justice. This would be far less cumbersome ... [particularly when we are talking about] NCS, CCSP, Core Funding.

I have a full booklet from the Lios na nÓg Playgroup, in Muirhevnamore. The Minister would have also visited the Holy Family Community Creche and would have dealt with some of the issues there. The following relates to the Minister.

Worrying increase of children with additional needs attending our service; ... a marked increase in physical, cognitive and behavioural issues along with diagnosed conditions.

The service states that the inclusion of all children and families is "coming with a serious impact to our staff as the needs of some children can predominate their time". What is welcome is the AIM programme, but "we are struggling with current allowances due to the increase in numbers of children access the programme at level 7".

I could give the Minister the statistics-----

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