Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I join Senator van Turnhout in the call for a statement from the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Fitzgerald, a woman for whom I have the height of respect. I believe she is doing an excellent job given the resources she has. It is up to her Cabinet colleagues to back her in getting extra resources in order that these crèches can be properly inspected. It is not acceptable that quite a few counties throughout the country have no inspectors and there are no inspections, not even once each year. There has been none for the past four years or so and that is unacceptable. What we witnessed last night was horrific child abuse, to which my colleague, Senator Mooney, alluded. It included force-feeding children, shouting at them, tossing them around and tying them into chairs. It was totally unacceptable. This type of situation occurred in the orphanages in Romania some years ago and we were all horrified. It cannot be allowed to continue. Inspections should be carried out as a priority and published on the Internet, just as the whole school evaluations are published on a monthly basis.

Child care workers are all qualified at a minimum of FETAC level five, a very good qualification. It has been tossed around by some of the media as being irrelevant and useless but it is an excellent qualification. We should try to ensure that all child care workers in these crèches have this qualification. Crèches are only required to have 50% qualified people. I maintain a good start would be 100% of staff with the FETAC level five qualification. Let us be honest about it and start paying qualified people properly.