Ms Bernie McNally:

Some services charge for childcare. If a provider has 18 children in a room and fees are being charged for those, there is a profit for the provider. The other factor is that when the national childcare scheme is introduced, some children who have a parent at home will not be entitled to after-school care. Previously, disadvantaged children availing of the CCS could attend for 40 hours per week even though they had a parent at home. The national childcare scheme has an in-built anti-poverty policy. A child with a parent at home will only get 15 hours of subsidised - heavily subsidised for many - childcare. Some services that were reliant on such children attending for 40 hours per week or for a few hours after school will no longer have that income for those hours.