Save Our Children from Michael McDowell.

spongebob

Only in Ireland could the National Child Care strategy be funded from the prison budget....in effect.

Mc Dowell controls the purse strings for Childcare (up to 14 years old)

He has the ENTIRE capital budget for building Creches and Playschools and After School services.

He has the MOST of the discretionary current budget for the running of self same Creches and Playschools and After School services. Depts of Health and Community Affairs may contribute some as well.

The problem is that he has apparently blown his budget for the year on heavy handed EU and Summit related matters.

Therefore Mc Dowell (already in June) has no money left for the childrens budget. No new creches or playschools will be funded this year unless McDowell gets more cash from McCreevey .....McCreevey is inclined to let the PD's take all the flak for being heartless and unkind to the lil' kiddies so he wont give McDowell any more money unless he has to and the word is that McDowell will be forced to beg hard for the Kiddy money which will then be ringfenced from his other budgetary problems because he did not rinfence it in January. To make it worse it will appear trough the spinners that FF are trying to protect the Kiddies from the PD's by not letting McDowell spend the rest of the Kiddies money on security matters....yadda yadda . Either way the lack of funding for creches will rebound smartly on the PD's . Expect to have it burst onto the news about late July or August

McDowell has been frantically requesting additional funding for his Dept from McCreevey since April , McCreevey has been trying to get him to 'justify' his requests.

Its a real political stitch up but in all fairness it could not happen to a nicer guy than McDowell. There are so many backlogged capital projects (because the 2004 'Justice' cash was blown on Garda overtime escorting Euro geezzers around Dublin ) that the fallout for the PD's will be felt nationwide.

M

therecklessone

Shouldn't Herr Flick be arguing that the provision of childcare is best left to the market anyway?

God damn these freeloading free marketeers and their big government...

MarcusGarvey

Yay for inequality ! Suffer little children, it's good for competition.

If he spent more time looking after his own affairs instead of chicken littling us about Sinn Fein he might get a tad more respect.

spongebob

He intends to promote competition by not building creches and protecting his National Law Enforcement Monopoly instead.

Sinn Féin would contend, through their community policing 'initiatives' of various sorts , that they are the only challengers to his National Law Enforcement Monopoly although thats not entirely a good thing, is it now !?

M