Dr. Anne-Marie Brooks:

I thank the Senator. I will start and I will then invite colleagues to speak to the action plan, the workforce issues and regulatory issues she has raised. I agree there has been an enormous amount of change over recent years and a very significant increase in investment. The sector has responded very well to that. It has been very flexible and has embraced change in many ways, including the doubling of the ECCE places to two years, the access and inclusion model and the core funding model. There has been enormous change, which the sector has worked with us on.

We accept that all of those changes and that increased investment have led to some complexity in the system and have increased the administrative ask on providers. There is funding allocated through core funding to address administrative costs and in year two of core funding, that will increase to €37 million. In addition, we have tried to take a number of steps to simplify processes this year and to ease the administrative workload, as I mentioned in my opening statement around the parent statement and the single fees list. The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, in recognising the challenges expressed by the sector, has asked us to progress this action plan for administrative and regulatory simplification and work on that is advanced. My colleague, Mr. Doheny, will give the detail on that.