Dr. Fergal Lynch:

We will answer as many of them as we can as quickly as we can. Just to be clear as regards the ECCE funding, when we moved to the new funding model of the temporary wage subsidy scheme for childcare, we basically repurposed our money. The difficulty was that, while leaving the ECCE funding in place would have been fine for ECCE providers because it funded pretty much the full cost of what they were being exposed to, only 58% of all the funding comes from the State system, as I mentioned in my opening statement. Therefore, the non-ECCE funders which are full-time providers of services would have continued to be at a major financial disadvantage. We needed to spread the funding across a larger number of providers and while it was reasonable to continue the ECCE funding for the first few weeks from the middle of March to early April, after that it was clear that we needed to move to a different model, and that is what we did. As to guaranteeing never to do it again, we need to look at the circumstances in each case. Hopefully we will never go back to a situation where we need to close providers but that was a very difficult situation.

In terms of the number of services closing, I mentioned earlier that we have notification of 18 closures but that 17 new services have indicated an intention to open. That is not unusual. Every year a number of services open and others close. The total number of places has increased significantly each year.

On the danger of there being a preschool desert, we hope that will never happen but we need to look at each part of the country and support the provision of services as best we can. That very much depends on demand and supply in different areas. As already stated, it is difficult to predict with any degree of confidence or certainty what the level of demand and supply will be over the next number of months. We are facing into an uncertain period, there is no doubt about that. The original funding model finishes on 28 June and the new funding model that will come into place on 29 June is based on trying to support, as much as we possibly can, the provision of childcare in an efficient, fair and reasonable way. Above all, we need a model that works for the benefit of children. We recognise that it is a very difficult environment to be operating in. We know that childcare providers face a very difficult situation at the moment. We have been as helpful as we possibly can in terms of developing a model that would assist them in the context of their operations. We have been as helpful as we possibly can with regard to explaining and supporting the public health requirements, including play pods. We are hopeful that we will have a reasonable number of well functioning services operating from 29 June.