Senator John McGahon- speech from 17 Jul 2024

I will be brief. First of all, just thanks to Senator Currie for arranging this debate. Minister, there are three key areas I want to touch on. One is in relation to the planning aspects of childcare. Two is in relation to the kind of experiences of childcare providers in my hometown of Dundalk. And third is a point that I just want to touch on about Senator Currie's report that she recently did about a new model. So just to touch off on the planning aspect of it, follows very much on from what Senator Kine said, what his experience was in Galway. Similar to mine, we have seen a housing explosion in parts of Dundalk town where we are building houses to beat the band. It's a great work that is going on there. However, what is happening is there are creches being provided for in the planning permission. The houses are flying up. Three or four years later, people have moved into these areas, no creches. The same goes with playing facilities. The same goes with shops. It's becoming a big issue. It's actually taking away somewhat from the really good news of how well this government is building houses. That is just key examples there where we need to make sure that the facilities and the community facilities that we are putting into these housing developments are being followed up with as quickly as the houses are going up. So that would be something that I would be very keen to see and to hear your views about how we can actually rectify that. The second point that I want to move on to is actually just to segue a little bit more on to the provision of childcare itself. And this is a result of a meeting that I had with Siobhan Duffy and Marion Waters, who run the List Ninoog childcare facility in Merhevenamorenton Dock. And I had a two or three hour conversation with them a couple of weeks ago where I had a real insight into some of the difficulties that they face as a childcare provider. And I just want to list two or three of the difficulties that you may be able to come back with in your response. The first one was actually the financial impact of it. And at their particular crash over the last number of years, they've actually reduced some of the numbers of children in some of their preschool rooms to make sure that they can still provide a good level of support to the current children that are there. So to give you an example of that, a full capacity classroom might be 22 children. 69 by 22 is 1,500 euro a week. That's about 57,000 euro per year. So when they reduced the number of children to 15 to make sure that the children that they had there in the room were getting a good quality of care and attention, that obviously cuts it down from about 57,000 euro to about 39,000 euro a year. So that's the decision that they made. I wouldn't be doing something like that. They also raise a pretty good point to me, which is that the need for early intervention units for preschools and not just primary schools, with financial support to create these units, and their point was that it could be of real benefit for children if they could give a more specific learning process in an early intervention unit. The other issue, which I've come across myself in the last couple of years, is not being able to offer staff work for the full 52 weeks of the year, so that people then in the summer are having to try and get on to social welfare and make that transition there. Finally, it actually came to Garda vetting. Garda vetting obviously is extremely important, but unlike primary schools, they were saying that perhaps a more blanketed approach to Garda vetting in early intervention would be good. So essentially where a primary school teacher, well, just to give the example, in early years, they have to be vetted for each individual service that they work in, whereas when it's done by, so for example, sorry, I'll just be clear about this, Garda vetting is extremely important, but unlike primary schools that have a more blanketed service approach, i.e., the Garda vetting for the Armagh Diocese covers every school within that area, the issue is when it comes to early interventions, it doesn't, so if you wanted to change from one early intervention place to one crash to another to another, you need to reapply again on each occasion. So that was a key point that they were saying to me. So that was a couple of key points there from both Siobhan and Marion. They have a number of other points here, but they're actually maybe slightly outside of the scope, particularly in relation to the AIM program outside of this debate, but I will forward to your office and we can have a further reproach or further discussion on that. Finally, just to conclude, I really want to commend Senator Curry for her report on better planning for local childcare, which is really where a lot of this debate is coming from today. But one of the recommendations that I noted, which I think is important, is recommendation number four, under the need to develop a new model for the State to acquire childcare facilities built by developers. It is quite clear that 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 the State-led public childcare provision in the future. I think that's very important because it can act as a stepping stone that we can start using now to get us towards that State-led public childcare provision in the future. Minister, just to wrap up, what I would say is to follow on from the points that Senator Cassell has made. Look how far we have come and how far you have come in the last four years in this Department in terms of the provision of childcare. It is now affordable, it is now more widespread than it was four years ago. We have nearly €1 billion a year, this time alone, more money than ever before. So we have made huge amounts of progress, and I think it is disingenuous for any of the Opposition to try and say anything else about it. But like everything, Minister, there is the ability to tweak things, there is the ability to make things that little bit better, that little bit more efficient, and I know with this motion today that is what we are trying to do. Thank you. We have no authority behind. Thank you. Thank you.