Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I would certainly appreciate all the work that Mr. McCarthy and his officials can do to achieve that.

I turn to the ECCE scheme. In some ways it could be extended to family support centres. When the wage subsidy scheme was in operation the level of funding that was going into the childcare sector was incredibly significant. We have a large number of very small operators, many of them with great passion and commitment. However, in many cases the current model of pay per child per use does not do anything to help them meet the capital costs of providing that service. Similarly, my area has a fantastic new family resource centre to be opened soon. The Department via Tusla provided the family support centre with a number of staff but nothing in terms of capital. Other agencies, including local authorities, had to meet that. Does Mr. McCarthy accept that the weakness of the ECCE scheme is that we do not have an ambitious capital programme as we would have had in the past, for example, with the equal opportunities childcare scheme? There is a significant problem in providing this pay-per-use service when we do not provide a strong ambitious capital programme.