Ms Karen O'Sullivan:

As regards childminding, the DCYA has a working group looking at the regulation and registration of childminders in a way that would suit the Irish context. It is looking at comparable jurisdictions, such as Wales and Scotland, and the North, and how they have gone about registering childminders. There is a working group, including Childminding Ireland and other organisations, which is looking at that. As the Deputy mentioned, we are looking for registered childminders for Government funding to go into but we recognise that the registration and the regulations must be proportionate to a person minding a small number of children in the person's home and that the current regulations on larger child care services are not directly applicable. The group is looking at how we can manage that process to suit everyone to allow persons to choose registered regulated childminders but to allow childminders to continue the valuable work that they do in their own homes.

We were asked about asylum seekers and refugees by Senator Devine. The child care committees have been very involved. Certainly, with the recent resettlement of Syrian refugees, we negotiated with the DCYA to ensure that there was funding made available for the provision of child care for young children coming in so that their parents could access English language classes. We have worked closely with the Department to try to ensure that the refugees coming in to be resettled are supported in every way and that the children are supported with their integration, including bringing the younger children who would be at school-age level to after-school, camps, etc. We have been working with the Department of Justice and Equality and other agencies on that.

With the asylum seekers and those in reception centres, we ensure that either there is child care provision on site or the children have access to the ECCE services, that is, the free preschool year, when they are qualified off-site as far as possible. There are several specific child care funding programmes for refugee resettlement children. Also, we now have a new one for transitional funding for children who are experiencing homelessness. We have a new funding scheme specifically so that those children can get the opportunity to be out of bed and breakfast accommodation or hotels and having a better experience during the day, and also giving the parents the time to do what they need to do.