Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minster for her presentation. It is important to start with the positives and to welcome what happened in last year's budget. It was a welcome announcement and it was step in the right direction. The recent announcement of €3.5 million support for the child care providers was another welcome provision.

I will not rehash the questions that have been asked because I am blue in the face asking questions about the ICT platform for the ACS. My only question in respect of ICT is whether the Minister has secured enough funding from the Department, because what we are about to set into seems to be a mammoth task. Does the Minister have the budget to see it through all the way?

In her opening statement, the Minister stated that the Department is re-examining how the ACS budget cap can be implemented and is in discussions with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, and that this follows legal advice on the issue. Could she explain exactly what that statement means?

In relation to other preparatory paperwork or work that needs to be done on the scheme, is the Department of Children and Youth Affairs also looking at the legislation for the sharing of information between Departments? I understand legislation will be needed to share information with the Revenue Commissioners and the Department of Social Protection. Do we need to amend the legislation to include that area?

The Minister said the affordable child care scheme is aimed primarily at parents and guardians in a way to lift families out of poverty. Does the Minister think the affordable child care scheme goes far enough to ease the financial burden of middle income families or is there a progression in the next budget as one of the Deputies already mentioned?

As an aside to the departmental officials, we talked about FIS earlier. Let us look at SUSI. The wheels for the affordable child care scheme have already been developed in the Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI model, as FIS is excluded in the measure of income under that scheme.

We talked earlier about family income supplement. The wheels for the affordable child care scheme have already been developed in the SUSI model which excludes family income supplement. SUSI is working well for the cohort of people who engage with it in the terms of reference as to who is in, who is out, what qualifies and what does not. A great deal of the groundwork and heavy lifting has already been done with the implementation of SUSI. Could we short circuit some of the questions and issues by looking at the existing SUSI model?