Dr. Eilis Hennessy:

I will ask Mr. Toby Wolfe to answer some of the questions about the regulation of childminders and will pick up on some of the other points made by various members. Deputy Kelleher asked about the evidence. Some of the main evidence comes from studies by Professors Kathy Sylva and Edward Melhuish, who were part of the evaluation team that examined some of the early child care provision in the United Kingdom. These studies were carried out at multiple sites right across the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland, and it was found that while high quality is absolutely essential for children to benefit, children also did better in the services that were mixed - in other words, those that had children from a variety of backgrounds. Consequently, there is quite specific evidence to support this, and that is the reason the expert advisory group recommended it.

I will clarify what Deputies Ó Caoláin and Catherine Byrne asked about in respect of parental, maternity and paternity leave. Maternity leave is leave that we intend to be taken solely by the mother. At present, such leave is paid for six months, and it is known from evidence that the majority of women go back to work at that point. We believe it is important to extend this, and our suggestion is that the extension should be made available to either the mother or the father. We are calling this parental leave. However, we do not mean it is available to both parents at the same time if they wish; we mean that the parents choose. We think that the six-month point is probably a good time to allow parents to consider it themselves. By using the term "paternity leave" we are referring specifically to leave that can only be taken by the father, and that is two weeks. I completely agree it would be nice not to put too tight a timeframe on it because, depending on the circumstances of the parents, two weeks may be very valuable at different periods. I completely agree on that point.