Ms Moira O'Mara:

We will ensure that does not happen. I believe I missed something the Senator said the first time around.

Deputy Conway asked about the role of the Department of Justice and Equality. It is involved on our children services committees in the 16 counties where we have them. It works with local players there in terms of youth diversion. At the moment it focuses down as far as youth and they try to divert children from 12 or 13 years of age. I agree on the need for early interventions which is where our Department's perspective arises in terms of working with parents. We actually work with parents of prenatal children as well as young children. As well as working with early years, the new initiative will work up to 18 years, so we do not want to cut off at that point.

We do not have a regulatory system that is appropriate for child minders - only 600 people have notified the HSE. I know there have been some voluntary notifications but there is no legal protection there. I know the Minister is very concerned about getting child minders more into the system. We need to regulate the child care sector better. I understand the HSE is moving to a registration system which should be operational by the end of this year. That will be a first step in moving from notification to registration. Then we hope to bring in regulations and move to the next step.

The Senator asked about having a proper programme of activities for the new school age sector, which is also unregulated. As with the ECCE programme, there is no legal requirement for a qualification. However, any service that is in contract with us will need to deliver a programme that we will require. We are working on developing that at the moment. We will probably not have it for the pilot, but we will have it from September.