Ms Frances Byrne:

I am happy to answer for Early Childhood Ireland and I am conscious of time.

It would be moving towards a Scandinavian model. The last Government left that in place through the national childcare scheme. We estimate that to get the levels of funding that Deputy Bríd Smith described is probably four times more. Two party manifestos mentioned getting to €1 billion in the next five years. That would be very welcome from our point of view. It is certainly critical that in the next phase of the programme for Government, priority would be given in the first 100 days to telling us the amount of money involved. The parties have mentioned investment. We do need to get to those Scandinavian levels for all the reasons Deputy Bríd Smith outlined. The countries she referred to have the lowest levels of child poverty.

The early years sector - I hate to use this phrase about such an important sector - addresses a lot of things and has been described facetiously as a magic bullet. All of us are in agreement that the investment is key. We look forward to that day and possibly having a myriad of debates about how that money will be spent. The important point is to get the Government commitment to continue the journey towards Scandinavian levels of investment. We are probably looking at €2 billion to start out with.