Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 6 July 2021

Joint Committee On Children, Equality, Disability, Integration And Youth

National Action Plan for Childminding 2021-2028: Discussion (Resumed)

Mr. Bernard Gloster:

I thank the Deputy for her questions. I will ask Ms McDonnell to give a headline view of how the registration system for providers works, which is what would be expanded for childminding, and whether a specific module is needed for it. I hope the registration portal through which people interact with us at present will reopen in early August. That will continue normal business. The Deputy is quite correct that consideration will have to given to a module or capacity for potentially thousands. Ms McDonnell will speak about this. With regard to the resources to achieve it, it is predominantly more about the skill set and capacity resource we have in our ICT department. At present, our recovery plan to bring it to a level of stability after the attack and bring forward some actions from next year will take every hour of ICT capacity we have from now until the end of the year. It will be into next year before we develop any new module. Ms McDonnell will describe it. The system she has at present is quite effective, other than it would need more capacity.