Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister. The first point he made relates to capital expenditure and the provision of extensions and new builds under the building blocks scheme. However, the 33,000 children who need a childcare place today cannot wait for the capital projects and extensions, which, in many cases, I presume, will require planning permission. Some providers have the physical space needed but they have closed rooms because they cannot get the staff. They physically cannot staff those rooms. In order to build capacity, we really need, number one, to look at the wages in the sector and we also must be innovative in looking at existing buildings. As I have said previously, I can think of several community centres in my own area that are either vacant all of the time or underused during the day. We need to look at existing buildings in our communities, which could be used as shared spaces, rather than looking for capital funding and planning permission to build. The other issue is buildings that have already been built as part of housing developments but are left idle.

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