Finlay: Department of Education needs to take hands-on role

Barnardos chief executive Fergus Finlay yesterday said the Dept of Education needed to take a hands-on role in the provision of childcare programmes following the Prime Time programme which highlighted shocking issues in the sector.

Mr Finlay said childcare was typically operated by private sector companies with little state involvement and claimed: “We as a country are not doing it right and I think we need to look at that.”

Speaking on RTÉ’s Today with Pat Kenny programme, Mr Finlay said: “Like everybody else I think I was completely shocked and stunned by some of the images that were shown.”

He said he was glad that a spotlight had been thrown on the area and thereby apply pressure on the system amid longstanding warnings over childcare issues.

On the level of inspection in the childcare sector he said it compared unfavourably with that operating in nursing homes, where some nursing homes had been closed down due to non-compliance with standards.

“It has also led to a very high level of confidence and awareness,” he said. “I just can’t, in this technological age, see why we can’t do something similar in relation to childcare settings — it just doesn’t make any sense to me at all.”

Mr Finlay said that while the experience of Barnardos staff indicated that the great majority of childcare settings were run with care and attention, the programme highlighted little evidence of training and supervision, particularly when it came to supervisors and managers.

He also said there were “examples of some staff who did not seem to like children or want to be with them”, who he described as a group of “untrained people who weren’t happy in their work” and who were “effectively taking it out on the children”.

At a time when debate is focused on the possible provision of a second free pre-school year, he said more money needed to be invested in quality, rather than quality, and said it was time for the Department of Education to take a more central role.

“Overnight an industry grew up,” he said, adding that the Department of Education had decided at an early stage that childcare was an issue of childminding rather than education and so “wanted nothing to do with it”.

“The mess was created and designed almost from day one,” he said, adding it was “inevitable that we were going to end up in a situation like this”.

Mr Finlay also said promises were made years ago that inspection reports would be published online, and that this now needed to happen as a matter of course.