Mary White (Fianna Fail)

Go raibh míle maith agat. The Minister of State has said that the Department will be able to help disadvantaged parents who live in areas of economic advantage. For instance, Dublin 4 is the most exclusive postal address in Dublin, but there is a pocket of disadvantage in parts of Ringsend. Those people are terrified their crèche will also have to close down. Most of the crèche's clients are working, but they are in low-paid jobs. Many of them are non-nationals. They are not in the A or B bands, but many of them live in the O'Rahilly and Whelan social housing. We would like to keep that group at work, retraining or studying so that they can develop their potential. This group would be the perfect example of a group that should be helped under the departmental brief to help disadvantaged groups in advantaged areas.

I laud the approach of the Minister of State and the determination to obtain data on those availing of the system to ensure people do not misuse it. The Department of Finance has a responsibility to ensure that moneys are used properly and data will be effective in ensuring this. However, there was not adequate dialogue with the people who work voluntarily in these community crèches.

Ms Irene Cafferkey, the manager of the Roscommon child care centre, did her thesis on the value of the contribution of the volunteers in the Roscommon area and found the value of the work of volunteer parents in the crèches in Roscommon to be €270,000 a year. That is the reason parents are upset. They have not been given enough time for dialogue on the proposal nor has the change been sufficiently explained for them to have respect for the Minister.

Most of the volunteers in community crèches are women. I have tried to get this point across at parliamentary party meetings. We hear that it is impossible to get people to do voluntary work, but there are women in community crèches throughout the country doing voluntary work, for which they should get adequate recognition. I do not mean they should get financial recognition because that is not what they want. However, they should get some respect and honour for all the work they do.

I understand the Minister of State is doing his best as a serious politician and I am confident he will address the difficulties in the scheme. He has said that depending on the information he gets, he will look at the situation again in January. There is nothing wrong with that approach. We cannot carve a scheme in stone. Most businesses or Government policies that fail do so because when schemes are introduced they are carved in stone and nobody ever reviews them to see if they are achieving what they are supposed to achieve. That must not happen in this instance.