Ms Bernie McNally:

Absolutely. We have been working very closely with Tusla. Tusla understands this is a pandemic. Services will take a while to get used to the new regime.

The HSE surveillance centre people told us that because we were already operating with low ratios, such as 1:3, 1:5 and 1:6, with the highest coming to 1:12, and already had a strict space regime, we did not need to go further. Schools might have to go further but we did not have to do so because of our lower ratios. In working with the sector, we expect that a lot of childcare providers will have to change behaviours but they still may be able to retain 100% of their children and we know of a number of services that are expecting to take back 100% and lots will take back in the region of 90%. Tusla and ourselves are working reasonably and pragmatically with the sector on that.