Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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I thank members for their wide-ranging questions which I will do my best to respond to.

Deputy Troy asked about child care. In terms of the development of child care over the past ten years, we have not developed a free and accessible child care service. That is the reality of the situation. Many people, including members, are now calling for further development in this regard, a call I support. However, it is very often a question of resources. I want to see more resources going into this area but as members will appreciate there are economic difficulties in doing so. It must be pointed out that 60% of the funding over the past ten years was in bricks and mortar in terms of establishing the various centres around the country. Members will know as well as I the range of services in place. There are some terrific child care services in place doing amazing work in communities throughout the country. There has been a huge development of services. In terms of free and accessible child care, that is a challenge not met when more resources were available. It is difficult to meet that challenge now. We must do so in an incremental way. Earlier in the week, I outlined in the Dáil the ways in which I see this happening. Clearly, more resources are required if we are to provide more free and accessible child care. We are focusing on developing services.

The Deputy also raised a number of important points in terms of eligibility criteria and the impact on services. This issue has also been raised with me by the service providers with whom I have met. It is an issue and there are changes which I will try to address. In relation to community child care facilities - the Deputy mentioned Moate as an area wherein there are no services - it is open at any time for us to examine particular black spots and see what we can do. One of the mechanisms we use in that regard is the child care committees in each county, which are responsible for analysing the level of provision. Given the current crisis in terms of the number of people in employment, there are vacancies in many areas. The question of accessibility remains. Very often the question that arises is who will pay for those places.

As I have stated before, it is not that people involved with child care in Ireland are charging too much as, generally speaking, they are not. If anything, one would like to see the workers in the sector being paid more. It is not a question of the providers or workers being overpaid. There are some facilities which charge more than the average but there is the argument that they offer more facilities. Ms Mary McLoughlin has responsibility for the child care committees and has done much work in the past year with those committees so I ask her to outline some of the current issues facing the sector.