Conor D McGuinness: Warns rural childcare gaps threaten jobs

Deputy McGuinness, supplementary. Go raibh maith agat, Cathaoirleach, and just to give a contrary view in terms of the capital versus operational or current, I definitely hear the feedback and I hear the rationales but I just will caution against saying that we're okay on the capital side because there are areas of the state where we're not quite there yet. I'm thinking of Dungarvan where we don't have a community centre, we don't have a family resource centre, where that community infrastructure is just not in place yet and I'd also be cautious even for this committee to be airing a view that the capital side is fixed because if there is to be a decrease in we'll say capital funding, over time it will be slow to ramp that back up and in 10 or 15 years we might find ourselves that the areas that don't have it still don't have it and the areas that have the infrastructure, well they've they've 10 years gone without upgrades so I just I would caution against that message being made. Conor, Deputy McGuinness, just to be sure, I'd say no one said that, what we said is that the capital fund was there and I'm sure all the witnesses would say that. I'm just making the point that in how that point is communicated, lest anyone, and I got the point, but lest anyone would misinterpret that or use that as license to not continue the capital funding, I just think a level of nuance needs to be applied for anybody listening in who might take the wrong meaning out of that. That said, totally appreciate the point that there needs to be a massive uptick in the operational cost and it's something that if you look at leader, that element that can be used for animation, for administration, it's always putting the companies under pressure and it is limiting how they can apply the capital side then as well. Something I want to throw out and perhaps get Mr Leahy and the wheel's opinion on it, we see community and voluntary organisations are being asked to do more and more with less or the same resources, but on the other side, and perhaps this is why they're taken advantage of in some respect by the state, they are the go-to people to fill gaps in state provision of services and we see that with the meals and wheels as we've discussed here, but something I'm really concerned about is the lack of child care availability in towns and villages and rural areas across the state and community child care really works, where it exists it works and they're under pressure as are private providers of child care, but we see, and this is a matter that I'm sure the social protection side of this committee will examine as well, but we see an upturn in unemployment in a cohort of younger women from the mid 20s up to about 40 and we just see, it's still quite low, but we just see that uptick, the trend going in the wrong way and we can extrapolate and it might be a guess, but we can say that part of that is about the crisis and availability of child care. Just a comment maybe on the role that social enterprises and community child care providers might play and if you have any thoughts on that. Thank you. In a previous life I worked for Early Childhood Ireland and I know that there are massive challenges in the child care area and you're absolutely right, in particular areas, it's just under provision and people can't get it in order to be able to go to work, but community child care provision is absolutely essential as part of the infrastructure of child care and there are organisations in that sector that find it very difficult to retain staff and to recruit staff and that is part of the problem and the supports, it's just another example of the state providing supports for a community organisation that's providing essential supports and services within the community. So absolutely with you on that, there's a long way to go on child care. You may make comments on the wider child care agenda, but when it comes to community child care, they are struggling right now. I just want to come in and let Louise come in there. There's a point there to be made, Deputy, with regards to rural homelessness and particularly for that cohort that you've identified in the early 20s for young women who do have children and are living at home in rural areas and the lack of services that are available for child care in those areas to activate those people into work, but also the lack of ability for transport and the other services to go with it, so it is a vicious circle and I think there's certainly, we spoke about it here before we came in, rural homelessness in that cohort is something that is completely silent and we'd like to see an awful lot more work brought into that as well. Just on the child care and I suppose for rural providers, they're smaller and they're very dependent on population, like that age group, they fluctuate from year to year and very often then their funding is dependent on that and it's a real struggle to stay afloat and then again, as Donal mentioned, trying to retain staff and it's even harder in a rural area to retain that staff and I suppose looking at the consequences then of that feeding into primary schools, very often if someone is bringing their child into a larger urban area, they're going into work on a daily basis to put their child in child care in an urban area, it can very often with the after school be a factor in deciding then to send a child to that school near that area instead of the local school. Just in terms of, and I know from speaking to a community child care provider on one of the islands and again, very often their funding is based on the numbers within the school or if they go over a certain number, then they lose the funding, but then during the summer and it goes back to your point about the women unemployed, they need the child care maybe six months of the year or maybe less and it might not be available so they're unable to work. So I think for the smaller providers, they seem to have to meet the same regulation or the same criteria as the larger commercialised operators.