Senator John McGahon - speech from 23 Jul 2020
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Transcript
Last week I attended a meeting with my former colleague Councillor Colin Markey about the closure of a particular creche in Toher and County Lowth, the Scallywags Creche and just to give a brief outline of the background to the issue leader. The Toher Community Project Group is a community group that has operated a CE scheme and continues to run a community creche. It's in a very rural part of County Lowth. They took over the local parochial hall on a long-term lease to open and operate the creche and it's been running as a non-for-profit company for about the last 20 years. and provides a really important service in that area. On Monday July the 6th, the manager advised all staff by text message that it was closing the next day that the whole company had ceased to trade. The parents were advised on Tuesday July the 7th also by a three-line text message that the creche was closing. That was it, game over. This left approximately 40 parents in the local community with no creche and no more after school or anything like that. The most galling thing about this whole situation, leader, is that the viability of the creche was so successful in the first place. Accounts for the year 2017-2018 showed retained earnings of 53,000 euro. 53,000 euro retained earnings and cash reserves of 450,000 euro. So the business is hugely viable. In terms of the governance leader, and this gets on to the point that I want to make, currently there's a board of four people who run this company. And of the four people, three are from one family. And indeed a number of board members have been removed and replaced by family members, which I have to add to the record is completely allowed under the Companies Act. But there was no effort whatsoever to try and help seek advice to maintain this service. There are so many viability plans, so many options with COVID that we can see, COVID restart schemes that could help. And to conclude, Minister, it's very odd. It's very disturbing. And I think it's very important that we ask the Minister into this house for a debate about the transparency and about the regulations that surround the childcare sector. Thank you.