Dr. Fergal Lynch:

First, I will add some context. Pobal is a registered charity and operates under the aegis of the Department of Community and Rural Development. It organises a range of services. The Department of Children and Youth Affairs is Pobal's biggest customer, with €500 million of childcare funding routed through it as the Deputy noted. Pobal organises all of the schemes for us and it also carries out compliance work. It has done compliance visits for many years. The Deputy referred to 2008. The compliance components Pobal was looking at in the early years concerned ensuring that parents were getting a service, the money from the public purse was being allocated to them and fees were not being raised.

Expenditure on childcare schemes has increased very significantly over the past several years. Our concern has always been to ensure good value for money for the Exchequer. However in the earlier years, up to 2015 or 2016, the money was granted on the basis of enrolments and registration. Once enrolments and registration were demonstrated, that was it. In later years the rules changed to be based on attendances. Therefore in more recent years Pobal has rightly been asking questions about the actual attendance numbers of children at these centres as opposed to enrolments and registrations.

With respect, I do not agree that Pobal has only started forensic audits in the last year. We have certainly asked Pobal to engage in a good deal of work in this space during the last several years, and it has done so. Pobal has identified excessive claims or overpayments in various years. However, because the rules of the scheme changed in the last few years to become much more specifically focused on attendance requirements, it is only in the last two years that we have been able to either recover money where it has been overpaid or make sure it is not paid in the first place. This has been made clear to the agencies involved. The role of Pobal has changed somewhat over the years. I can say more abut it if the committee wishes, but-----