Ms Avril McMonagle:

I will address some of Deputy McLellan's questions. She asked about the relationship between county child care committees and parents. In the first equal opportunities childcare programme, EOCP, we did not really have engagement with parents because, as the Deputy is aware, that phase of development was all about developing infrastructure. The national child care investment programme, NCIP, process and the introduction of the child care funding schemes, particularly the early childhood care and education scheme, ECCE, year, gave us a new audience with parents and, as I stated, that was a challenge for us. However, the main work we find with parents pertains to support and advice on accessing funding schemes. Some of them are not the easiest to access in terms of entitlements and so on, particularly schemes such as the community childcare subvention scheme or the school-age child care scheme. We inform parents of their entitlements, even at a basic level, in respect of the service profile within the county. If a new parent comes into a county, we can signpost what services are in what areas, what schemes they offer, the profile of qualifications of staff, for example, and can signpost them towards where they can find the latest copy of the inspection report. Our relationship with parents is all about informing them of what is good practice and to what they and their child are entitled. In addition, we even deal with things like complaints and general queries. That constitutes our relationship with parents.

As for whether the role of child care committees have evolved over the years, yes absolutely. I have been around from more or less the beginning in this process and yes, during the EOCP programme we were out on building sites and were acting as semi-architects, designers and all those things and then we moved into a different phase. It often is stated that money was thrown at the sector at that time but this is not strictly true because we were starting from a point at which child care services were operating out of people's garages or spare rooms and the infrastructure had to be built. It was a response at that time to the state of affairs at that time and because places were needed for children. In addition, the issue of quality often is mentioned, to the effect that there was no focus on quality. While there was, it was at a very low base. Sub-measure 3 of the EOCP programme was a quality sub-measure but as I indicated in the presentation, it was about basic things like policies and procedures and health and safety, that is, very low base quality, which were, nevertheless, very important fundamentals. Our role has evolved and as new policies have come online, we are obliged to respond quickly but again, that is one of the strengths of the county child care committee structure. We are all there, are imbedded at local level in our local areas and can respond quickly. In addition, our teams are highly skilled in a range of different areas from early childhood care and education to administration and financial skills. We come from a range of backgrounds and that is the reason we are able to offer the breadth of supports.

As for the inspections, yes they no doubt are very stressful. In an ideal world, it would have been much better had we had some kind of streamlined inspection process. Unfortunately, as the Deputy is aware, these things are not always that easy when one is dealing with legislation and in trying to push through some of the standards that we now need, it probably would have taken a lot longer to get them on a legislative footing. However, one probably would be looking at the importance of needing things like Síolta and Aistear to be embedded within the preschool regulations in a formal and mandatory way and for that to be streamlined definitely into a single inspection process. The services are under huge pressure at present with a number of different people coming in.

The Deputy also asked about special education needs and the system we had mentioned. Our idea in this regard is there would be a central fund held locally by every county child care committee because people would agree the last thing we need is simply to throw money at special needs. We need to make sure that for those children who need it, there is a full second preschool year available as a way into the second preschool year. Not all parents will choose that because it will not suit all children but it definitely should be there as a choice for certain children.

If there was a central fund available at child care committee level, then we could tap into the fund in order to meet the needs of every child. For one child it may be a piece of equipment; for another child it may be specialised training in sign language or personal care procedures. It could be just about anything. We are not stating that everybody needs to have a module in special needs. Yes, it should be part of the mandatory core training, but it is much more important that these short continuous professional development upskilling courses are available and, more importantly, that the money is available in time for a child to participate fully. There are many children with special needs in our mainstream early childhood services, but just because they are present physically and are being counted in the numbers does not mean their participation levels are the same as those of other children. That is our idea for that system. It is quite broad in terms of the supports that would be required.

The Síolta and Aistear programmes are an old chestnut that will not go away. Our strength is in what we can do locally. As Mr. Joe Ryan said, the Better Start initiative - the national early years quality development service - does not have the reach into the services that we have. We have direct reach into 4,500 services across the country. We are probably the only organisation that has that. That puts us in the position of being a key implementer in whatever service we are chosen to be resourced for. It is not about our saying what we could or could not do. We can do just about anything that policy drives us to do, because we have the infrastructure set up and the national reach into the services.

The big question is why there has not been a consistent roll-out of Aistear. The simple answer is that it has not been funded at national level. Pockets of community childcare have done their pieces of work, but it has not been possible to take it on to a national level. We are blamed for being inconsistent, but it is actually the case that we were not funded to do it in the first place.