Dr. Fergal Lynch:

I thank the Deputy. What he has described summarises very well many of the issues that we have been very conscious of for a considerable period of time and a lot of it would be generally accepted, including the issues of low State investment, high fees, low pay and so on. There is no argument about those. Obviously, I am not going to get into policy debate about what Government should do. I will say that there is an expert group which is developing a funding model at the moment and that started around this time last year, I think. That expert group has been working to help us develop proposals for the future in that regard. The funding model that it could propose could, for example, operate in parallel to the existing schemes or it could propose something else but the key issue emerging from all of this work is the scale and complexity of it and the time it would take to develop a new funding model.

Among other issues it would deal with would be things like fee controls, the question of reasonable profits and how best to develop a system for the future. I stress that it is a matter for Government to decide whether it wants to move to a particular different model, be it a public one or a mixed public and private one. We are certainly doing extensive work through the expert group, which includes experts from other countries and people within the system here to develop proposals for the future in that regard.

Obviously, the cost will be a major issue. The Deputy rightly identified that by comparison with other countries, Irish spending is low, although it has increased very significantly in recent years. State funding of childcare has increased by about 141% in the past five years, but admittedly from a very low base. We are starting from a low base and we have a significant expert group working on that funding model.