Vol. 346 No. 3
asked the Minister for Helath if he has considered the report of the working party on child care facilities for working parents with a view to introducing legislation to implement its recommendations; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
8.
asked the Minister for Health if he intends to implement many of the proposals of the report on child care facilities for working parents.
I propose to take Questions Nos. 7 and 8 together. My involvement, as Minister for Health, with the report relates mainly to the recommendations for the regulation and registration requirements in respect of day care services for children. I intend, with the approval of the Government, to include a number of provisions in the new Children Bill which will have regard to the recommendations in the report. The Bill will give clear statutory powers to the health boards to establish such services themselves, or to enter into arrangements with voluntary organisations for this purpose. It will also provide for the making of regulations governing the registration and supervision of the various types of child care activities.
Could the Minister indicate how many of the recommendations of the working party on child care facilities are being accepted by his Department? Does he intend to amend the Health Act, as recommended by the report, in order to allow the health boards to provide the services recommended?
A number of Ministers are involved with the various recommendations — Health, Education, Environment and the Public Service, as well as Labour. These Ministers, I understand, are considering the possibilities in respect of the report. I have indicated already the new provisions in the Children Bill. I have set up in the Department of Health a committee to examine the legal requirements and the standards necessary to implement the other recommendations. The major recommendations in my Department are being incorporated into the Children Bill, for example to give statutory powers to the health boards to establish day care facilities, which they have not got at the moment and to enter into arrangements with voluntary organisations on a joint basis for that purpose. The committee I have just referred to in relation to the legal requirements held their first meeting at the end of July and they expect to be in a position to submit their recommendations before the end of this year.
Are this committee dealing with recommendations relating to existing child care facilities which are provided privately at the moment?
That is so. In addition to that committee there is a steering group representative of the various Departments concerned analysing the cost implications of the group recommendations. That analysis is also necessary. It was identified in the Inter-Departmental Working Party on Women's Affairs and Law Reform. Because of the large number of Departments concerned, you have to get an indication of the additional cost but that will not prevent me putting the regulations into the Children Bill.
When will we have the Children Bill?
We will have the Children Bill early next year. I have had considerable difficulty in revising major sections of it. I have now employed additional legal advice in my Department and I certainly hope that it will be ready by March-April next year. It is taking much longer then I anticipated. I had to redraft the Bill virtually from the beginning.
Another broken promise. The Minister said this session.
No. If the former Minister had done his work it would be ready.
Given that this is perhaps one of the few growth areas in employment and in need and that the preferred arrangement for any working mother is, according to the findings of the report, either a relation looking after the child or a trained child care worker, is the Minister satisfied that there are sufficient trained child care workers available for employment at this stage? The Minister's Department have some responsibility in the existing child care courses, involving themselves in the content of those courses. Is the Minister satisfied that that area is being catered for adequately?
In view of the very considerable need for a wide range and network of facilities in this area my Department and I would favour a basic structure of health board facilities, which would be supervised and regulated by voluntary organisations, that the personnel in them would be properly trained and properly supervised, particularly in many of the greater Dublin areas where there is a total inadequacy of such facilities. I wish to see the existing facilities supervised, regulated and registered. Some of them are profit-making——
We are now talking policy and that is not in order at Question Time. Question No. 9.
Is the Minister satisfied that the Bill will be before the House at the end of the next session? We understood we would have it this session. If he is not satisfied does he intend to take any action to bring forward legislation to deal with some important issues that will be covered in the Bill, such as glue sniffing by children?
I am absolutely satisfied. I have done a great deal of work on it and I am sorry to say — I am not saying this in any political sense — that no work of any intensive nature on this Bill was done in my Department in 1982. The former Minister spent his time running around doing public relations work instead of being in the Department clearing the Bill.
