Creches are to be given a financial bailout after the Government bowed to pressure to intervene in the insurance crisis that is threatening childcare providers.

Homeless children are presenting at emergency accommodation hubs with underdeveloped swallow reflex and problems chewing solid food, believed to be associated with a prolonged diet of non-perishable puréed food.

Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone must try to break the Anglo-American stranglehold on our work/life balance, writes Victoria White

Deprivation in Limerick’s regeneration areas is worse than before the €300m process started, a new study claims.

The director of policy with Early Childhood Ireland, Frances Byrne, is calling for Tusla, Pobal and the Department of Education to form a task force, with powers similar to Hiqa, to carry out inspections of childcare facilities.

Information for community groups on how to submit effective applications for grant funding will be delivered at a series of events this month.

Denis Leamy is the new chief executive of the Cork Education and Training Board (CETB), Lavitt’s Quay, Cork.

Today’s Munster Post-Primary Schools SFC final (Corn Uí Mhuirí final), between Pobal Scoil Chorcha Dhuibhne and Tralee CBS, has been postponed due to a serious injury sustained by a young player in a game involving the Dingle school this week.

The Government has received just six applications for funding from communities who want to install a CCTV scheme in their local area, despite €3m being set aside to fund the cameras.

Dublin has benefited most from upturn, says report from Pobal Towns with 1,000 to 5,000 population have been worst affected

There has been a surge in the number of older people granted personal security alarms under a Government scheme — even though there has been an underspend in recent years of the budget available for the devices.

Deputy grand master Harold Henning railed against the provision of Irish language schools for small numbers of pupils and the erection of road signs using Irish.

People most likely to make a complaint about gardaí are white, male, aged 18 to 40, and highly educated.

The idea of reviving the Irish language as the first language of the Irish nation was always delusional, writes Victoria White.

After-school services are to be targeted by the Minister for Children Katherine Zappone when her department unveils an action plan for the sector in the coming weeks.

Parents can soon look online to find out how preschools in their area are teaching children and catering for their development.

The incoming general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions has identified fair pay and conditions, collective bargaining and respect for workers as the three principles which will govern her tenure.

A project which has boosted speech and language skills of young children from Cork’s northside could face closure next year unless it succeeds in securing new funding.

A State agency responsible for administering €300m in local development programmes is confused about its purpose and who is responsible for which roles, a review has found.

Oireachtas officials are to inquire into what happened to €75m spent by a state-funded charity to support thousands of school places which were never filled. 

Nasc, the Irish Immigrant Support Centre, launched an anti-racism social media campaign yesterday for the month of September.

A row has broken out between a Fianna Fáil senator and the Ceann Comhairle over the supply of an interpreter to a group of deaf people, due to travel to the Oireachtas for a debate on cuts to services.

Concern has been expressed over the way some €2.5m in taxpayers’ money was used to monitor the compliance of childcare providers.

To paraphrase a well-known commercial, ‘every little hurts’.

The Government has scrapped funding for an advocacy service provided to thousands of deaf people.

A controversial business park in Wicklow that was in receipt of State support paid out more than €100,000 in damages and settlements to employees last year.

Fianna Fáil has nominated teacher Norma Moriarty, from Waterville, to replace Cllr Paul O’Donoghue on the party’s ticket in the South and West Kerry area for the May local elections.

Employees of the Tipperary Hostel Fás project, which is the subject of a Garda investigation, are taking an employment appeals action to secure enhanced redundancy payments.

New laws will oblige all pre-school services to be registered in order to operate, Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald has confirmed.

Questionable spending involving more than €3.7m in grant aid has allegedly occurred in cross-border projects linked to the peace process.

Staff working in almost half of the creches and playschools inspected by the HSE in the past 12 months had not been vetted by gardaí.

A community group in Co Tipperary has said that any concerns Pobal had about its financial future are well behind it.

Creches and preschools are failing to comply with basic rules on garda vetting and references for staff, inspection reports show.

The Minister for Children said new standards for crèche inspectors will be introduced by September.

Executives in Leader groups are paid far less than their cohorts in comparable public sector roles, said IRD Duhallow chief executive Maura Walsh.

Child welfare is being compromised at a creche County Cork VEC broke procurement rules to build.

A €1m VEC creche that was supposed to facilitate a five-fold increase in affordable places is losing money and catering for the same number of preschool children than when it was based in a smaller unit next door.

The number of children in creches has fallen enormously during the recession with an oversupply of childcare places in every county — but Cork has suffered more.

County Cork VEC has accepted there were problems with unauthorised leases at Mallow Youthreach but at the last minute voted to deliver a report on the matter behind closed doors.