Ms Mary McLoughlin:

The Síolta and Aistear programmes have been introduced in preschool education, a sector that has grown very fast. This is unlike the primary school sector, in which all teachers have the same training and basic knowledge. One of the challenges in introducing the Síolta and Aistear programmes in preschool education is how to implement them. The Department of Education and Skills has responsibility for developing the Síolta programme and has run a field test with about 130 services. What it has identified is that giving staff talks on how to implement the programme is not the way to proceed. The Department identified Síolta mentors who worked very closely with the services. That is a model we have seen in other countries and it has been particularly successful in Northern Ireland. One of the strategies the Minister has identified to make Síolta and Aistear part of the way the staff work is to build a support network and work directly with services and specifically service by service. The Department of Education and Skills is looking at bringing Síolta and Aistear together because there is an issue in that service providers see them as separate and different programmes from which they can choose one or the other, whereas in fact they need to be brought together. There is a great deal of work going on in trying to develop it. The voluntary organisations and the county child care committees work very closely with services, but what we need to do is to provide more specific support, service by service, rather than the general support that has been provided to date.