Ms Frances Byrne:

There was a lot in Deputy Bacik's question. There is a touch of the old joke "if I was going to Dingle, I would not start from here" about this. It is a major challenge for whatever Government in power, including the current one, and for the officials. As the Deputy described, the system is fragmented and piecemeal, even in regard to the language we use and our shared understanding. For example, we may talk about for-profit and not-for-profit, but the backbone of the sector comprises between 1,000 and 1,200 settings that are ECCE only. No fees come in. They are owned by private individuals in the sense we all know them, that is, we all have such people in our housing estates throughout the country. They are in private hands but they do not take in fees and therefore make a profit in the way we understand other businesses operate. That core group is 100% funded by the State, given ECCE is 100% funded. There are also full day care providers and some ECCE preschools that offer after-school childcare, as well as those that offer stand-alone after-school.

It is quite complex and diverse and that is a challenge. The vast majority of providers are private and their heckles go up when they hear mention of profit because they will ask, very directly, what profit we are referring to because they are not making money. Many of them have been around for 30 or more years. They have set up a service and do not see themselves as a business. It is really complicated. Because of the way the system has been set up, there will need to be a conversation as this funding model goes forward about how we are going to tackle this challenge the Deputy and Ms Ward referred to. It has become a privatised model but not necessarily a for-profit one, and it is important to say that. Of course, there are, as Ms Ward described, shareholder-led chains but they are a tiny proportion, between 7% and 8%, of the 4,500. We need to include the full diversity in the conversations and that is very challenging. I do not think anyone would have wanted the industry to be this way, including an awful lot of the providers, which have to deal with a significant degree of administration, a lack of planning and everything else.

It is absolutely the case there are problems with the national childcare scheme, particularly for families living in poverty and families in pockets of either large cities or rural areas where a childcare place just cannot be found. In such cases, if you find out you are expecting a baby, you will tell the crèche provider before you tell your cousin because you want to get the baby's name down. There are problems also with fees. Providers, too, find the scheme very difficult to grapple with, even though the intention was to ease administration, which it has done.

The bones of the Scandinavian model are there and the funding model needs to be introduced thoughtfully, trying to address the myriad issues, which will be challenging. Children must be at the centre of that and quality for children, regardless of the circumstances of their families, needs to be prioritised. That is the great equaliser in the so-called Scandinavian and Nordic models we all admire so much. In those countries, there is universal quality for children regardless of income, with all parents paying something unless they are destitute, and there are also some of the lowest levels of child poverty. Those two things go hand in hand. We all need to watch the new funding model carefully and closely - we understand the report will issue soon and go live next year - to ensure children will stay at the centre of it and that everybody who has been delivering childcare, including the 30,000 educators, will be included in that discussion, with their needs taken into consideration in the funding model.