Marie Sherlock (Dublin Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I start by offering my support to all those providing an early years service in this country. I pay tribute to all those staff and providers who go in day in, day out to do their very best for the families they look after. I am conscious that there are huge frustrations in the sector about core funding, wages and bureaucracy. Many service providers tell me they are running unviable services. Despite all these issues, they go in and provide a brilliant and much-needed service across every community in this country.

I raise the issue here of services that are experiencing difficult and specifically the powers of intervention and the resources to be made available by the Department of children to those services. We know that €331 million is being spent by the State in this year alone in core funding across almost 4,200 early years services. There is an unprecedented €1.37 billion in total funding to the sector this year. Despite this badly needed money, I have come to believe that the Department of children has far too little oversight over the governance structures of the early years services it funds. By extension, it is a shocking indictment of the Department that no powers of intervention exist when a service finds itself in difficulty.

I am currently witnessing a situation in Dublin 7, where a preschool service has announced the closure of an ECCE session with just eight days notice to parents and staff. There is a whole series of issues with regard to the notice. It should have been 30 days but because there is a whole range of sensitivities around the issue - I am not going to name the service - thankfully a two-week extension has been granted. The crucial point here is that if a closure of an ECCE service or session is announced, Pobal and the Department are effectively left powerless to act. They can offer supports and there is a sustainability fund in place, but at the end of the day if the management of a service decides to close, the State can do nothing to intervene. To me, that is not good enough. If a primary school or a secondary school gets into difficulty, there are very clear powers conveyed by the State to intervene. The State recognises the crucial importance of continued provision of primary and secondary education, but for early years services there is nothing.

The First 5 strategy document for babies and young children is a wonderful Government strategy that is full of ambition. Objective 8 is dedicated to children having access to safe, high-quality developmentally appropriate integrated early learning and care, but where is the real commitment by the Department to these children if it is prepared to allow children go without a vital ECCE service for weeks or months at what is a vital time in their lives? The implication here is that if a service closes for whatever reason, there is no immediate replacement. We know from talking to Pobal that at a bare minimum, even if a new service comes into an existing premises, we are looking at about six months before that service can reopen. That is unacceptable. Of course Tusla has to be engaged in a very detailed registration process. There are of course high standards for every early years service.

The reality then is that a community can be left without a service. The context here is that Stoneybatter suffered a loss of 105 preschool places in just a 12-month period. We have not seen the replacement of those places in the area. Indeed, those losses happened because of the actions of the former Department of the current Minister for children. A diktat from the Department of Education meant the licences of early years services within primary schools had to be terminated. In one instance, a room was left empty for eight months. I look forward to the response from the Minister of State, but I hope there will be some progress in terms of an intervention.

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