Erin McGreehan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

What is needed per child? What does the State need to do? I favour a public childcare system and that is what I am pushing for. As Ms Duggan said, staff are educators providing an education rather than childminders. My children were the better of it after they left the ECCE years. I have a question on the better data. What does that look like? On the five-year plan, we have the census and know how many children are being born. We can do analysis and make estimates of what is to come but what do the data needed to properly plan look like?

There is also the matter of a capital plan to provide support. I know of a lot of community and voluntary providers. My children went to a community and voluntary provider for their ECCE years and that provider's problem is with capital, getting proper rooms and adequate space for the children and being able to expand the service while still accommodating the people in the community. What do those data look like?