Dr. Fergal Lynch:

I absolutely take that point. Since we are not the direct employers, we cannot directly influence pay but we increased the capitation rate paid to providers by 7% last September. We have tried to make the sector overall as sustainable as possible. We took the relatively unusual step of what we call non-contact time or programme support payments for the sector. We paid €19.4 million in the current year to assist providers because, as they will always say, this is not an area in which it is easy to cover costs and make any sort of return. The Minister has said a couple of times that she would support a sectoral employment order which the providers could organise. I understand that a number of the workforce are organising in that direction. In the longer term, I am very conscious that because we are not the employer, we cannot do the sort of thing that we might do if we were the employer. In the long term, we are developing a workforce development plan for the future of the sector.

Another important thing that we put into First 5, which was the strategy for children and young babies, is a new funding model. We are seeking to develop a new funding model which will create the right incentives for the sector as a whole, including paying the workforce more. I am not saying for a moment that there is a quick fix for this or that we can do something overnight. We also have to be careful that increasing capitation payments does not simply get passed on in increased charges to parents. We are treading a fine line. We are doing as much as we can and we are working with the sector.