John McGahon (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will be brief. I thank Senator Currie for arranging this debate. I wish to touch on three key areas. One is related to the planning aspects of childcare, the second is related to the experiences of childcare providers in my home town of Dundalk, and the third is a point about Senator Currie’s report she recently did about a new model.

To touch off on the planning aspect, it follows on from what Senator Kyne said his experience was in Galway. It is similar to mine. We have seen a housing explosion in parts of Dundalk town where we are building houses to beat the band. Great work is going on there. However, crèches are being provided for in the planning permission, the houses are flying up, people move into these areas and three or four years later, there are no crèches. The same goes of playing facilities, shops and all of that. It is becoming a big issue and it is taking away somewhat from the good news of how well this Government is building houses. Those are key examples where we need to make sure the facilities and community facilities we are putting into these housing developments are being followed up with as quickly as the houses are going up. I am very keen to hear the Minister’s views on how we can rectify that.

For my second point, I will segue into the provision of childcare.This results from a meeting I had with Siobhan Duffy and Maria Watters who run the Lios na nÓg childcare facility at Muirhevnamore in Dundalk. I had a two- or three-hour conversation with them a couple of weeks ago, when I obtained a real insight into some of the difficulties they face as a childcare provider. I will list two or three of the difficulties the Minister may be able to come back on in his response. The first is the financial impact. Over the past number of years, they have reduced the number of children in some of their preschool rooms at their crèche to make sure that they can still provide a good level of support to the children who are currently there. For example, a full-capacity classroom might have 22 children. Multiplying €69 by 22 gives €1,500 a week, which is approximately €57,000 per year. When they reduced the number of children to 15 to make sure that the children in the room got good-quality care and attention, that obviously cut it down from approximately €57,000 to about €39,000 a year. That is the decision they made but, naturally, other crèches may have to look at it on a financial-means basis and would not do something like that.

They also raised a pretty good point on the need for early intervention units for preschools, not just primary schools, with financial support to create these units. Their point was it could be of real benefit for children if a more specific learning process in an early intervention unit could be given.

Another issue they raised, which I have come across myself in the past couple of years, is not being able to offer staff work for the full 52 weeks of the year. In the summer, people have to try to get onto social welfare and make that transition.

The final issue is Garda vetting. This is obviously extremely important, but, unlike primary schools, the Lios na nÓg staff said that perhaps a more blanket approach to Garda vetting in early intervention would be good. In early years education, staff have to be vetted for each individual service they work in. Garda vetting is extremely important but unlike primary schools that have a more blanketed service approach - for example, the Garda vetting for the Armagh diocese covers every school within that area - when it comes to early intervention, there is no such approach. If staff want to change from one crèche to another, they need to reapply for Garda vetting on each occasion. That was a key point they made.

Those were the key points made by Siobhan and Maria. They made a number of other points but these are slightly outside of the scope of the debate, particularly those relating to the AIM programme. However, I will forward their points to the Minister's office and we can have further discussion on that.

I commend Senator Currie on her report on better planning for local childcare, which is where much of today's debate is coming from. One of the recommendations I noted that I think is important is recommendation No. 4 on the need to develop a new model for the State to acquire childcare facilities built by developers. According to the report, it is quite clear:

This new model would open up new opportunities for small to medium [term] childcare providers and community-led partnerships, fostering a supportive environment for the childcare sector. It could also act as a stepping stone to state led public childcare provision in the future.

That is very important because such childcare can act as a stepping stone we can start using now to get us towards that State-led public childcare provision in the future.

To follow on from the points made by Senator Cassells, let us look at how far we and the Department have come in the past four years in the provision of childcare. It is now affordable and more widespread than it was four years ago. Nearly €1 billion a year is being spent on it, which is more money than ever before. We have made huge progress. It is disingenuous for anyone in the Opposition to try to say anything else about it. Like everything, there is the ability to tweak things and make things that little bit better and more efficient. We are trying to do that through the motion.