Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I want to follow on from what Senator Ó Donnghaile said about what took place in Jenin overnight. Activities have now been escalated to a new level given the loss of life and the campaign by Israel to effectively uproot whole communities. We need to hear a clear message from the Irish Government. I very much support calls for statements next week.

A second thing has to be said today. Very serious aspersions are being cast on the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, a very important organisation. While Senators may agree or disagree with its views, casting aspersions on it and its motives regarding the hate-crime legislation before the Seanad is unacceptable.

I want to raise an issue I raised before. Last Friday, we heard about the loss of 44 preschool places in the very small area of Stoneybatter, Dublin 7. This means a loss of 105 places over the past 12 months. This is because the preschools have had to leave the primary school settings they were in because of an expansion of special needs education. This is all good in itself but there is a complete lack of joined-up thinking between the Department of Education and the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. There is now a massive loss of preschool places on top of what is already a huge shortage of childcare places for the under-threes, a shortage of afterschool places and a provider who has found it impossible to source an alternative location and who is heartbroken as a consequence.We have Tusla regulations that need to be set at a very high standard, but the reality is that it is near impossible, particularly in the inner city, to try to set up a new preschool or childcare facility. The Government has announced funding for next year, but the situation needs to be dealt with as a matter of urgency now because whereas the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth has told us there is an increase in places elsewhere in the country, it is not happening in Dublin.

My final point relates to what happened regarding the administrative error within the Arts Council last week in respect of the notification of 141 individuals that they had received next generation awards. We all get that there can be administrative errors or human error, but we cannot overestimate the impact on those involved, particularly the artists, many of whom live a precarious existence. We also cannot overestimate the impact of their achievement in getting the award and then realising they had not succeeded in getting it. The Arts Council obviously needs to look at its IT systems. Just as importantly, there is a serious flaw in the system in that artists are precluded from applying for more than one award in any one year. Therefore, if you apply for the agility award, you cannot apply for the next generation award. It is not good enough that it takes five months for a response to come back to any artist on his or her application. If we want to support artists, and given that they may qualify for a number of different awards, we have to allow them to apply for multiple awards as opposed to limiting them to just one a year.