Ms Fiona McDonnell:

With regard to the registration of services, since 2016 we have registered early years provision and 4,184 providers are registered with us. Since 2018 and the implementation in 2019 of the school age registration, we have registered 1,169 of these providers. This gives us approximately 5,353 providers registered with us. The majority of these come through the portal. This requires certain policies, a certain amount of information and Garda vetting. This happens at the registration office. What happens at present is we do a fit-for-purpose inspection and register the services. They are inspected again over a three-year period once or twice depending on need. The inspections are risk based. In the plan for childminders we are speaking about three times this number, which is 15,000 providers. It will be a decision of all of the working groups the Department has spoken about this afternoon as to what will be required to register. We will advocate that it be simple and clear. We will also advocate that a certain amount of first aid training is done before childminders register with us. All of this will be decided through the working groups. When we did our piece looking at inspection internationally, we found much variety and variation in Europe and throughout the world. It could be that providers will carry out a self-audit. There are many options to make inspections more approachable for the providers so it is a home from home. We are working on all of this.