Ms Anna Shakespeare:

Dr. Rogers referred earlier, as have other colleagues, to the percentage of GDP expenditure that is recommended in the OECD report. Ireland is currently at 0.3% and we need to head up to 1%. From a cross-government perspective, it is a question of where the money gets spent and whether it gets invested in early learning and care, building that entire competent system so every child has - "standardised" is probably the wrong word - but a similar positive experience of interacting with early learning and care, the same opportunities for development and the same interaction with quality service provision provided by staff who are well educated and understand and know what that looks like. The evidence is overwhelming that that works and that those children then become the future of that country.

Dr. Rogers works with early learning and care providers directly in the context of supporting them to implement national curriculums in order that the child's experience of early learning and care, whether they are in Mayo or Dublin, is consistent. That needs to be funded and the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth is on that journey in the context of the recent publications on the core funding model, the expert group and the full implementation of the First 5 policy as a really good starting place.