Ms Bernie McNally:

We have done some costings on a State provided childcare system. For example, were we to pay all those people with degrees a teacher's salary and those with a Level 5 or 6 qualification an SNA salary we would probably need about €1.6 billion extra for centre-based services. Were we then to replace and reduce parental fees, as one can imagine, it would cost a lot more money on top of that. Were we to buy out the capital assets it is a lot more than that. A public service model is a minimum of an extra €2 billion or it could be €5 billion but it is a significant amount of money.

We wanted the expert group to have an impact very quickly. We did not want it producing something that we would need an extra €3 billion to implement. Its terms of reference at the moment have more to do with how can we move in an incremental manner, how can we control fees for parents, and how can we improve the quality and pay the workforce, and not specifically on a State-run model.