Tom Clonan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for attending today. I want to apologise. Like many of my colleagues, I was at another meeting. My apologies if I duplicate some of the questions or points that have been raised already.

Following on from the meeting last week, I am not sure if it is my colleagues' experience, but I received an enormous volume of correspondence from early childhood care providers. This is the largest volume of correspondence I have received since we began to discuss the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022, which is very controversial. This issue rivals that in terms of the amount of correspondence.

In advance our meeting today, I tried to collate it. We tried to tabulate the primary concerns. I will boil it down to two recurring issues for the sake of brevity. One is an almost universal assertion that the core funding is inadequate and does not allow care providers to plan a sustainable and coherent service. I am sure that we all agree that this is investment in our citizens at a crucial stage in their development. In a previous life, I was a primary school teacher. I attended Stranmillis University College on a student exchange from Trinity College. Those were happy days back in the 1980s and interesting times in Belfast.

In terms of value for money, if we were to look at it in really crude, quantitative terms, it is an invaluable investment in our little citizens, to get them at that age and stage of their development. The question of core funding has come up, with the almost universal assertion that it is inadequate. Is there anything on the horizon about increased investment in the core funding? Are the witnesses cognisant of these calls for greater investment?

The other thing that came up, and apologies if this has been mentioned, is what appears to be a duplication in the financial reporting. Almost all the providers tell me that they have one set of accounts they must submit to Revenue that are fully audited. I presume it is SORP-compliant reporting.

In addition to that, they are now being asked to provide a parallel or duplicate set of reports for a third party. They all say that this is very time consuming and expensive. They are having problems getting auditors and accountants who are prepared to do this. Is there any possibility of discretion in this regard and making it one set of accounts that have to be returned?