Ms Gráinne Cullen:

The strategy involved the three Departments together, which is new ground in many ways, because transition is important. While the policy of the other Department is its policy, we work closely with our colleagues in early years. The forum had a session on the current work the early years section is doing on the early childhood care and education, ECCE, scheme and the other provision. The numbers coming through at junior infants are here somewhere. We have a measure of the children who are coming from ECCE into junior infants and there are fewer Traveller children. The Senator is familiar with that. The problem is that they are then coming in already at a disadvantage as regards their development. However, parental choice is always important too and while our policy is very much focused on inclusion and moving away from segregated provision, if the parental choice is such that it means a child can participate in the ECCE scheme or the on-site provision, is that better for a number of years, as we move forward or should we tackle it? Our policy is inclusion with peers in a setting that will be mirrored as they go through primary and post-primary school and life.