Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 23 June 2020

Special Committee on Covid-19 Response

Childcare: Impact of Covid-19 (Resumed)

Ms Marian Quinn:

I will take that question. Not necessarily because, unfortunately, as I alluded to earlier, there is significant reliance on family, including grandparents. If 50% traditionally had such care, there will not be enough services able to open next week to take up that capacity. There are also childminders coming into this. We know that a lot of people in healthcare work 12 hour shifts and, typically, services cannot offer this model of delivery. Childminders will be hugely important. There is also the reality that there are service providers that typically do not open in July and August but that could be open this July and August because they have not been open since mid-March. They have been engaging with parents on whether parents want them to open for July and August when typically they would not. In some instances, quite a number of parents - or a majority of them - have said they could really do with that service but, unfortunately, the providers are unable to be involved in the scheme for opening because it is predominantly for those services that typically open. This is an untypical time and sometimes we need to look at resources that might not have been used previously if those providers feel they can offer such a service.

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