Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wish my colleagues a happy Pride and I hope the weather is as good on Saturday as it is today. I concur with Senator Murphy's comments on Shannonside and Midlands 103. We are blessed with quality journalists in both of those radio stations in our area.

I concur with the comments of Senator Fitzpatrick and I second her proposal that the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth would come in here. We have a serious disparity in the funding going into the early years sector, where those that are solely in the early childhood care and education, ECCE, scheme are receiving low capitation compared with those that have full day care, making it extremely difficult for them to survive. Another issue is that those who work in the sector also have to sign on the live register during the summer months outside of the 38 weeks. Yet, we have a situation where we are struggling to get schools to provide the July provision. I propose that we look at those workers who are qualified and who have level 5 and level 6 qualifications in childcare. They should be employed in the summer months and the summer provision should be given to the children who most need it. I would expand on that and we should look at bringing in third or fourth year students in our third level colleges who are doing speech and language therapy and occupational therapy to do their work experience through the summer months, given the services that are needed and lacking for the children. I concur with Senator Fitzpatrick's comments and in asking for the Minister to come in to spell that out.

I also wish to speak about free legal aid. In recent days in my county we had a situation where an individual was arrested following a stabbing incident. They were brought to court, bail was objected to by the local gardaí but bail was granted, as was free legal aid. They went back to the courts looking for the bail to be relaxed so they could go for a medical appointment in Turkey and proceeded to have a lovely sun holiday at the expense of the taxpayer. That is giving two fingers to the people of my county and my county town, which is not acceptable. I have a situation with another young 18-year-old lad whom I know. He is being brought to the High Court in a case attached to an incident that happened with a school. He has to go to the High Court to try to defend himself. He is working part time and because of that he is not eligible for free legal aid. He is €1,700 over the limit and this situation is not acceptable. This needs to be reviewed. We are talking about this for years and it is not acceptable.