Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have a question to ask on behalf of Deputy Dillon. I believe it has been answered but I will ask it for the sake of clarity. Deputy Dillon would like to know from the departmental officials what are the plans to increase the funding available to national organisations under the Department's remit? Have the Minister and the Department committed to additional funding pathways? The coming period will be a time of real change attempting to move tens of thousands of childminders into a regulated system. Deputy Dillon states childminders must be supported and engaged with at this time.

I have a follow-up question to my earlier contribution. I also want to say thanks for the huge amount of work that has been done. This is very clear and obvious from the answers of everybody. When the childminding representative groups came before the committee one in particular spoke about how seven years is too ambitious. I recoiled in horror because in the context of remote working and everything else, we really need a flexible childminding response. I see this as being a very clear pathway to this. What are the views of the witnesses on this? Are we being too ambitious or not ambitious enough?

Following our previous meeting, Mr. Gloster followed up with some of the St. Patrick's Guild people and I want to thank him publicly for this. It was very sensitive and very thoughtful.