Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This has been going for a number of years. There are parts of Lucan, north Clondalkin and Newcastle where parents of newborns and infants have had no checks on their children. That can only be a bad thing. I was looking at the trend in the last five years when it comes to public health nurses. There has been a steady decline in retention of them. That is very worrying because, as the Minister knows, a child needs at least three to four developmental checks throughout their first four years and if they are not getting them things will be missed. That is extremely worrying in the context of newborns and infants This has to be acknowledged and rectified because otherwise certain things, especially around children, will go unnoticed and that can only have detrimental effect on children and parents.

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