Dr. Fergal Lynch:

I note that one of the recommendations of that subgroup talked about the need for an Irish medium early years co-ordinator based in a Department. There were various other recommendations in relation to supports through development officers and so on but what has emerged from that is the fact I mentioned in my opening statement, namely that we are recruiting two early years, Irish medium officers, one of whom will be working in non-Gaeltacht areas and one of whom will be working with Better Start.

The subgroup of the forum informed that particular development, for which there is funding available for these posts next year.

The other question was about the Department's funding of these services and whether there is extra money for early years when providing these services through Irish. Currently there is not. It is a question of whether we should, from a policy perspective, employ some form of positive discrimination. So far we have not done that. We have concentrated on a major issue for us, namely affordability right across the country. The second major issue is quality and making sure that whatever we fund is of a high quality. The third issue is access. We have focused on affordability, quality and access. We have not, so far at least, moved in the direction of providing additional services for particular areas such as Irish language. Who knows but this may happen in the future. I made the point earlier that we have been so far behind the curve, so to speak, by comparison to other countries, that we have been concentrating on increasing investment overall, which we have managed to do, over the last number of years. I mentioned a figure of a 117% increase in the last four years and plan to double investment in early years settings overall in the next ten years. That may be something that could be examined in the future. Currently our focus is on developing all of the early years right throughout the country, irrespective of language.