Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Payments ceased for a number of months during the year. They resumed for services that deliver a service over the summer on 29 June 2020, and for the others, at the end of August or the beginning of September. That meant that there was a saving, particularly in the ECCE scheme and the NCS over the course of the year where payments were not being made. As the committee knows, we brought in the childcare wage subsidy scheme, the wage subsidy scheme and the employee wage subsidy scheme, in which a significant amount of money has been invested over the course of the year. The vast majority of that was direct Exchequer funding. As regards the initial allocation in my Department for childcare, a chunk of that was not spent between March and June 2020. We are using some of those savings from this year to address some of the overspends in Tusla. The reason is that there was a period of underspend when those schemes shut because of Covid.

As members will be aware, we put significant money into supporting childcare, particularly supporting workers through the wage subsidy schemes. We will continue to do so until 31 March next year.

As the Chairman noted, we are making a very significant additional investment of €61 million into Tusla next year. I am currently working on the performance statement, which is a document the Minister sends to the agency every year outlining priorities for the coming year. In the context of the performance statement, Tusla will outline how much it will spend on the various areas. The Chairman may be asking about domestic violence services. Providers in that area are eager to see increases similar to previous years and to ensure that the additional €2 million allocated due to Covid-19 is maintained. When I spoke to the chief executive of Tusla, Mr. Bernard Gloster, and the chairman, Mr. Pat Rabbitte, at the time of the budget I explicitly said that I wanted significant investment in sexual and gender-based violence services. I do not have an explicit figure for the committee today but we should have clarity on the expenditure on various services in the next fortnight. Because of the significant extra investment in Tusla, I have identified areas I want to see Tusla particularly prioritise in 2021 such as residential care and support for unaccompanied minors coming from Greece and other trouble spots. There are lots of other things going on in the domestic violence sphere. Those measures specifically concern the finances for refuges and services.