Mr. Mark Doheny:

I will take this. The Senator mentioned we have signed a memorandum of understanding with the partner organisations in the 30 city and county child care committees and also with Pobal and Pobal Better Start. We have appointed an overarching programme board that is going to provide expertise in organisational design, establishment of other agencies and in the early years sector some specific experts are providing an independent advisory point on the key issues of the establishment. We have been in a phase of informal information gathering, but we are entering into a more formal gathering phase now. With the MOUs in place we are starting consultations on issues such as vision and mission statement this side of Christmas, starting with the CCCs and Pobal and the boards and staff of those entities. We will expand that in 2024 to the wider sector. The desire of the programme board, and mine as project lead, is to ensure the evaluation phase and the research phase is comprehensive and inclusive. We will certainly be consulting widely with all stakeholders, VCO colleagues and stakeholders and providers as well as educators themselves, but the wider stakeholders are obviously parents. We are consulting widely throughout that 18-month phase, so it will be born of that data-led approach. We are approaching it with principles of partnership co-design with those bodies and that is the desire.