Pearse Doherty (Sinn Fein)

Ba mhaith liom plé a dhéanamh ar dhá cheist a d'ardaigh mé anseo sa Seanad cheana. Yesterday I raised the student support Bill and the delay in students' being able to acquire grants from local authorities or VECs. I appreciate the difficult job the Leader does in trying to facilitate debates for all the requests he has received. I commend him for allocating time for some of the debates I have requested. I did not seek a debate on education, although one would be welcome to discuss the broad issue of education. My question was whether this Bill will come before the Seanad before Christmas, whether the measures will be in place by September 2008 so that students will not have to go through the same rigmarole as this year and whether there will be discussion with the USI before the Bill is presented to this House or the Dáil.

My second question is an issue I raised last week and the week before, namely the new child care funding arrangements. Senator Fitzgerald addressed it this morning. This is a serious issue and this is the third week running I have requested a debate. I appreciate that the Leader has agreed a debate will happen here but would like to impress on him the urgency of the matter. The office of the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children with special responsibility for children has issued a letter to over 1,000 voluntary community child care groups informing them that if they do not return statutory declarations by next Friday, funding will be discontinued. These declarations are forms that the parents of the children attending the child care facilities have to fill in identifying their social welfare incomes, PPS numbers and other private information they do not want to hand to community and voluntary groups. That threat must be lifted and I ask for a debate on this issue next week. Next week it will be November and the Leader has said we will be sitting three days a week. If so, we need to make that time available so that we have the debate and ask the Minister to lift this threat to more than 1,000 community child care facilities in the 26 counties.