Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise two issues today, the first of which is that of family resource centres. Along with my colleague, Deputy Quinlivan, I stepped across to Buswells yesterday to meet a number of people from the family resource centres national forum, including the local one in Limerick, the Northside Family Resource Centre. We had a very good engagement on the crucial work they do. I think we are all familiar with that work. They give tremendous support to families, communities and educational schemes. It is also important to recognise what they have done for refugees, particularly for those from Ukraine but also from other areas, in reaching out and giving them the essential supports they need.

They had a very clear and simple message yesterday, that they really need to have their core funding increased. Indeed, 83 family resource centres are not actually receiving the agreed funding they should be getting. They have costed it and the cost throughout the State would be €3.3 million. I want to put in an urgent plea for a debate on this topic ahead of the budget, so that we can all get together and get behind the family resource centres. The Northside Family Resource Centre delivered more than 32,500 meals last year to 300 older people and 20 children. The impact they make on people's lives is incredible. Their early years learning is incredible, too, but again they talked about the challenge they are facing in recruiting staff. We know the issues around that. I call for the issues in respect of wages for early years educators to be urgently addressed. Right now there are 242 children on a waiting list in Limerick who cannot get resources. Part of the reason is that they cannot get the staff to carry out that essential care and early education. I hope we can have a debate in the near future to recognise the important work of family resource centres.

In the minute or so I have left, I also want to make Senators aware of the scandalous treatment of workers by Tesco Ireland at the moment. I hope colleagues are aware of this already. A number of workers, those who pick and deliver the goods for people's home shopping, are to have their wages cut by thousands of euro from next Monday. Changes to these workers' terms and conditions are being imposed without agreement with the trade union, Mandate. The difference it will make will literally be thousands of euro. We must bear in mind that Tesco has obscene levels of profits and does not need to do this. It is choosing to do so to increase profits even more at the expense of the very workers who earn those profits for the company. For me it is an issue of morality as much as workers' rights. I call for an urgent debate on this issue of workers' rights. We see the big corporates squeezing workers and squeezing terms and conditions. This is a prime example. Tesco is going to make its workers thousands of euro worse off each year. It is also going to cost them additional moneys in terms of child care because of the change to their terms and conditions. None of this is necessary. It is being driven by one thing only and that is corporate greed. I call for an urgent debate.