Results 921-940 of 21,128 for speaker:James Reilly

Written Answers — Department of Children and Youth Affairs: Adoption Legislation (15 Dec 2015)

James Reilly: The Government approved the publication of the Heads and General Scheme of the Adoption (Information and Tracing) Bill 2015 last July. The Bill is intended to facilitate access to adoption information and operates on the basis of a presumption in favour of disclosing information in so far as is legally and constitutionally possible. The Bill will, for the first time, provide a statutory...

Written Answers — Department of Children and Youth Affairs: Youth Services (15 Dec 2015)

James Reilly: My Department administers a range of funding schemes and programmes to support the provision of youth services to young people throughout the country including those from disadvantaged communities. The funding schemes support national and local youth work provision to some 380,000 young people and involve approximately 1,400 youth work staff in 477 projects and 40,000 volunteers working in...

Written Answers — Department of Children and Youth Affairs: Early Childhood Care Education (15 Dec 2015)

James Reilly: The Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme was introduced in January 2010 to provide for one free pre-school year for children before they commenced primary school. Children aged between 3 year and 2 months and 4 years and 7 months in the relevant year qualified for the free provision. Those children qualifying for free pre-school in the 2015/2016 programme year were born...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Children and Youth Issues: Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (10 Dec 2015)

James Reilly: That had something of a Corkonian inflection.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Children and Youth Issues: Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (10 Dec 2015)

James Reilly: I am very glad to be here to update the joint committee on the work of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs since we last met in July. The committee has considered a number of issues relevant to my Department since. I thank members for the keen interest shown and the added value they have brought to the process. I would like to summarise the significant progress made on my...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Children and Youth Issues: Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (10 Dec 2015)

James Reilly: I thank everybody for their questions. I genuinely meant what I said earlier that I believe this committee has been very good at teasing out matters and improving our legislation for children. The ICT support for the Health Service Executive, was raised by many members. During the Estimates process, moneys were sought for this which we allocated. The performance statement has been...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Children and Youth Issues: Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (10 Dec 2015)

James Reilly: Grand.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Children and Youth Issues: Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (10 Dec 2015)

James Reilly: I would like to reiterate what I was saying about ICT. Capital moneys that were given to Tusla in 2014 and 2015 remain unspent. I met the chair and the CEO during 2015 to discuss this issue and the national child care information system, which I mentioned earlier. I do not think money is the issue hereper se. Tusla wrote to the Department in late November about the HSE-Tusla service...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Children and Youth Issues: Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (10 Dec 2015)

James Reilly: Is that about the number in Wheatfield Prison? Somebody mentioned that 17 of that age cohort were in the prison but I was not aware that was the number. The Chairman wanted to know when we will complete the new building. Significant progress has been made. The final unit will be received either this month or early next month but our main challenge is not the legislation or the building,...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Children and Youth Issues: Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (10 Dec 2015)

James Reilly: Yes.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Children and Youth Issues: Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (10 Dec 2015)

James Reilly: Apart from social workers in Tusla, other workers are needed to support the social worker, not least administrative staff to do the secretarial work. There are social workers who do not even have IT support such as an iPad who are writing reports when they could be face to face instead of using a dictaphone and sending off reports. Deputy Sandra McLellan raised an issue in a parliamentary...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Children and Youth Issues: Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (10 Dec 2015)

James Reilly: I will stop now.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Children and Youth Issues: Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (10 Dec 2015)

James Reilly: Senator van Turnhout spoke about the early childhood care and education, ECCE, contract, the learner fund and the higher level 7 qualification. As has been indicated, we want at least one level 6 qualified leader per centre. I hope future learner funds will be able to address level 7 qualifications. The focus to date has necessarily been on levels 5 and 6. We will get there incrementally....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Children and Youth Issues: Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (10 Dec 2015)

James Reilly: Yes, because we could end up with two or three people qualified to level 6 is in one area and none in another.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Children and Youth Issues: Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (10 Dec 2015)

James Reilly: Yes, but at least they will have one person qualified to level 6. Ms McNally will go into more detail because she has more up to date information. Senator van Turnhout also mentioned guardians ad litem and we have addressed this. I am very much in agreement with Deputy Byrne on the youth strategy, ensuring we hear the voice of youth and cherishing all of our children equally in the year we...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Children and Youth Issues: Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (10 Dec 2015)

James Reilly: On the special needs initiative, every one of the services from 2017 on - the course runs next year - that has an inclusion officer or co-ordinator will get an extra €2 per child per week in capitation regardless of whether there is a special needs child in the school. The idea is to promote inclusion. These are further funds that have been made available. There are many ways of...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Children and Youth Issues: Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (10 Dec 2015)

James Reilly: Yes. We want to continue to have training for community employment, CE, scheme participants, but we cannot do that at the cost of the quality of service provided to the child.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Children and Youth Issues: Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (10 Dec 2015)

James Reilly: Since the rapporteur's report involves many Departments, it is being circulated to them. We are waiting for it to return, which we hope will be shortly. We have the social worker numbers, but we may need to revert to the Deputy separately with them. I had them a few minutes ago. I do not have the total number, only the number of new workers. Some 258 new social workers were recruited in...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Children and Youth Issues: Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (10 Dec 2015)

James Reilly: We can do so. That is not unreasonable. It will be after Christmas.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Children and Youth Issues: Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (10 Dec 2015)

James Reilly: I thank members for their questions. I will take the opportunity to echo what several of them have said, that is, to thank my young Department - why would it not be young, looking after youth affairs and children - for all of its work. Its personnel have met many challenges, but there are more to be faced. We have worked well together with the agency, the youth sector and the voluntary...