Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I join colleagues in welcoming our panellists, some of whom I have met and engaged with in the past. I no longer hold the responsibility of children's spokesperson as my colleague, Deputy Sandra McLellan, recently took over that role very competently.

I will take each of the presentations in turn. A number called for a second ECCE year, with Ms Bradley the first to do so. I absolutely endorse that as it is most certainly very important. It was also suggested that consideration be given to increasing the number of community preschools and I would also endorse that view but can the witnesses expand on how that might be promulgated, encouraged and facilitated? Ms Bradley's closing recommendation was that innovative ways be looked at for the provision of support training and supervision of SNAs. Has she any particular suggestions as to innovation that would lead to the provision of support training and the supervision of SNAs?

I welcome Ms Lacey-Crowe again. She spoke about changing language and it is welcome to hear about additional needs. Ms McCormilla used the word "independent" and this kind of language was not applied in all the engagements I had as spokesperson on children for 13 years. I welcome this more thoughtful use of language. Ms Lacey-Crowe and Ms McCormilla both made a point about the difficulty there is with so many stakeholders being involved, all with a different focus. Can Ms Lacey-Crowe expand on that? How does it manifest itself? How can we move towards a more cohesive, streamlined or even a single service across the board? Would that be an objective?

I welcome Ms McCormilla and thank her for all her many years of service in this area. I also recognise her guidance and support during her time with the Border counties child care network. I had the opportunity to visit her in direct service provision many years ago and remember it very well. She talked about streamlining the free preschool year scheme, the community child care subvention scheme and the child care education and training programme into a single body, with centrally-funded salaries across the board, as part of the move towards greater simplification. Regardless of whether the service is independent or committee-managed, what difficulties does she see with this? Does she envisage any issues? She spoke about the differences in dealing with the differential between the independent provider and the community-based, committee-managed system and whether rates should impact. The rates should not impact as this is about children rather than the provider so there should be no rates across the board. We were talking about simplification but that is the simple answer.

In her earlier responses Ms McCormilla spoke about capitation and making allowances for other costs. How does she deal with all of that? Our rapporteur and my close friend and party colleague is beside me and I want to say in her presence that it should be moved from 38 to 42 weeks and should be across the year, and that is only a starting point. She also called for a second ECCE preschool year and I absolutely agree. Her observation that qualifications do not guarantee the achievement of quality standards and services applies across the board and in everything.

Proposal 3 was for a registration system for childminders similar to that north of the Border. Under whose oversight and inspection would this be and who would be the registering authority? Would it be the Department of Children and Youth Affairs? A call was made for the reconvening of an enhanced national childcare co-ordinating committee and this is very important and something which needs to be restated. I have nothing to add to the points made but I emphasis it because I do not want it to slip aside.

I thank Ms Quinn for a very spirited delivery. She made a number of points that hit me. It is very interesting and very welcome to note the statistics giving the number involved as 25,000, which does not take on board the 19,000 childminders. I was deputising for my colleague recently on one of the children's Bills and I made the case for the regulation of childminders but the Minister stoically refused. I do not know if any of the witnesses saw the exchange. Deputy McLellan was in the Chamber but Senator van Turnhout was here. Point 8 in Ms Quinn's recommendation was to recognise professional childminders as providing a home-based equivalent to central-based provision and to regulate and support accordingly. I absolutely agree and I sadly have to share with her that, in recent weeks, the Minister sat where she is and said "No". That needs to be picked up on and to be pressed. Why does it take us a lifetime to get to the right place?