Mr. Mark Doheny:

Expressions of interest have just closed over the mid-term. We are currently in the process of notifying the membership of the advisory group which is going with the action plan. The intention is to have the first meeting in the coming weeks; the working date is 1 December but we have not notified that to the members as the correspondence is due to issue. We have prioritised work over the last couple of weeks since this has been announced and we will be prioritising work over the coming months. We envisage that we will be inviting providers and wider stakeholders in the early years sector to come in to the stakeholder sessions to give observations, particularly parents. There is a lot of focus on providers but we also have to consider the burden on parents in terms of applying for the national childcare scheme, NCS. We are conscious of that duality of roles but, obviously, the advisory group will have a blank canvas to look at all of the administration requirements.