Sandra McLellan (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses and thank them for their presentations, which were comprehensive and contained many good recommendations. We have had a number of meetings over a long period so my questions will be relevant to the presentations and will not rehash questions we have been raising repeatedly.

The city and county child care committees offer a wide variety of services locally to early year childminders, after-school services and parents. What is the relationship between the child care committees and parents? What do parents avail of and about what issues do parents contact the committees? The city and child care committees were established to advance the provision of child care facilities and to support the implementation of national policy. Do the witnesses believe the role of the county child care committees has evolved and is very different today from what they were originally set up to do? Perhaps they would comment on that.

With regard to the inspections and the various child care funding programmes, the inspections are very inconsistent. From speaking to others involved in the sector, I am aware that they are very stressful and it is difficult to deal with so many different Departments. How do we address this? Should it be streamlined through one Department, and which Department or body should that be?