Emer Currie (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wish to focus on childcare supply in Dublin West. I will outline the reasons we need a review of section 28 of the Planning and Development Act and the ministerial guidelines from 2001, a review of the interaction between county councils and county childcare committees and radical change from the loose planning guidelines we have to deliver childcare supply in order to plan, build and open childcare facilities, especially community childcare facilities, in local communities.

Last year, I went through Fingal County Council planning permissions for the five years previous to quarter 3 of 2022. Of the 80 applications granted, 42 were amendments to existing childcare facilities, involving an increase in numbers, an extension or changes to time, while 38 were new applications. When I looked into the developments in Dublin 15 that would fall under the section 28 guidelines, I found very few that had been progressed. I found one that is under construction at Balroy House on Carpenterstown Road, another in St. Joseph's, Clonsilla, which has not been built and is now part of phase 2, and a third in the Hansfield strategic development zone. This year, I discovered there are two more. There is one for a childcare facility at Barnhill, Dublin 15, where 1,200 units were recently approved, and there has been planning approval for a childcare facility in the Blanchardstown shopping centre. As regards the childcare facilities that have been opened under what I consider the section 28 guidelines, however, I discovered only one in the past ten years, as well as another that was built but not opened for five years. There are also two in estates that have been built but not opened and in respect of which the developers have applied to change the use.

This tells me that section 28 is not working in the way it was designed to operate. The facilities are not being built. My colleague, Senator Seery Kearney, has focused on this issue in terms of the exemptions to putting them in planning but I have found that even when they are built, they are not being built as suitable premises and they are not being opened. We need a radical review of section 28 and how the guidelines are working in communities.