Mr. Mick Kenny:

The Deputy mentioned targeted supports. I think that targeted supports were created to support families. A lot of services, especially in disadvantaged areas, have said that the removal of supports have had a detrimental impact. We have expressed our concerns about the scheme to the Department and even prior to its launch we had a lot of concerns. Now we are past breaking point. The EWSS is covering the cracks at the moment and something needs to be done immediately to cover up the issue.

In terms of the need for a child-centred approach, our most recent survey, in which 551 services participated, showed that only 4% of services felt that the NCS is child centred. We need to ensure that any new funding model has children at its heart. I acknowledge that there is a need to support working parents and equality. Earlier, Mr. O'Connor and his colleague spoke, and SIPTU has its Big Start campaign, but we are talking about two halves of the same coin. I mean that childcare policy has been looking at creative ways to stretch inadequate funding further but that has been to the detriment of the children, staff and services.

Realistically, as Mr. O'Connor said earlier, we need mass investment in the sector because we are at a crisis point and we are going to start going backwards. For many years, as services that have been working with disadvantaged children and families, we have been talking about intergenerational change. However, what is happening at the moment will undo decades of early intervention work whereby we have seen steady progress in families. Studies have been done on the impact, including the intergenerational impact, of investment to tackle disadvantage. It has supported not only the children but also the children of those children. We need to realise, if we really want to deal with poverty, including intergenerational poverty, that it is a long-term game plan and we need to be setting the scene now.