Dr. Fergal Lynch:

Those are important questions. It goes back to the factors leading to the underspend in 2017. There was a lower uptake than we projected for both CCS and CETS. One of the major reasons for that was practical. The subsidies we were paying at the time were relatively low, relative to the cost of childcare. For example, we were paying up to a maximum of €95 for one of the payments. We increased that to €145 for 2018 because we recognised the gap was not bridgeable. Similarly, we had a rate of €50 that we increased to €95. We recognised that the difficulty was a trap whereby the subsidy that we were pitching was not sufficient to provide support for people seeking to use the scheme. We addressed that and, by 2018, coverage had increased significantly and we were at the level that we predicted. If my memory serves me, in a relatively short number of years we have gone from approximately 25,000 to approximately 60,000 people being covered by those schemes. I would need to check the exact figures but it is of that order of magnitude.

We got there by 2018 but I fully accept that in 2017, we did not, and that was primarily for the reason I have described. We also engaged in a major communications campaign as part of what we called the September measures. These schemes will be amalgamated or abolished when we set up the national childcare scheme. They will form part of that in the future.