Ms Teresa Heeney:

I will give some immediate responses to the Senator’s questions. On being able to target areas, and I mentioned childcare deserts earlier, the Pobal deprivation index provides a great deal of information which, I imagine, the forward-planning unit in the Department of children is using in order to target new services and make sure that children in disadvantage have access to those services. Unfortunately, affordability was not addressed in yesterday’s budget. That continues to be an issue for families. I will speak a little about attendance rules. We hear from a lot of our members who run services that the attendance rules for the NCS can be very problematic for some families in circumstances where parental capacity is a challenge, families that are in unstable housing conditions or there are disability issues and there are hospital appointments. That poses a financial impact for families and for services because there are stringent attendance rules. We would encourage the Department to review those rules in order that those families are not discriminated against.