Ms Frances Byrne:

There have been in ways. Nevertheless, even with the improvements in reporting on funding the average full-day crèche is still reporting into and subject to inspection or auditing by up to seven State agencies, or both.

There are also environmental health inspections for those who cook food on the premises. Nobody is saying that there should not be regulations - far from it - but there is a significant administrative burden on providers. There has been flexibility within the system. During Covid, the Department very much took the fact that children may not be able to attend on board for very understandable reasons relating to lockdown, whether parents were back at work and the existence of Covid in a family and offered additional flexibility but this needs to be extended. We would hope that some of that would be dealt with when childcare Ireland is set up. This is the agency that is envisaged by the Government. We would hope that there would be one set of eyes on settings as opposed to seven pairs.

Apart from the money, which is very welcome given that up until now, we were the lowest investors across the OECD, one of the very welcome things about core funding is that it will decouple funding from attendance. This is really important. If I have an ECCE-only arrangement - picture your own area wherever you live and I live in a housing estate where there are two or three Montessori premises attached to houses - they would typically have space for 11 children or 22 if they have a second session. It concerns what happens if that crèche signs the core funding contract and has the capacity, including space, staffing, etc., for 11 or 22 children and come September, only eight of those children take up places. I know we hear about waiting lists but circumstances can change and parents can also understandably put names down in a number of crèches in the local area so the expected numbers of children do not always walk in the door in September.

What the Department has done, which is really welcome and goes back to the expert group's report, is say that if a crèche's capacity is for that number of children, it will base its core funding contract on that even if the number drops to eight during the year for whatever reason such as families moving. That is really welcome. This is what happens in Scandinavia. We talk about Scandinavia. They murder us up there. The Nordic countries are all different. There are lovely iPads and little Johan's mum, dad or guardian comes in, settles Johan and on the way out, moves like we all do when we want to get access to an app, and I should not be mentioning a brand, on our tablet or phone and at some point during the morning, an educator will go around and make sure that Johan is there and that is that. The state does not care about whether the crèche had 14 or 16 children on a particular day.

The only thing that would trigger concern would be a family support concern. For example, if Johan did not come in for two days in a row and nobody contacted the crèche, there would be a very supportive phone call to the family to ask whether everything is okay and to ask about what is happening. If those circumstances arise here or if a parent looks for flexibility, our members' hands are tied because depending on the programme, and the Deputy rightly referred to the complexities involving, four, eight or 12 weeks, the subsidy and fees will go down so providers' hands are tied even as we are encouraging remote working because it is much better for the environment and work-life balance. Because of the administration of the programmes, our members cannot offer that flexibility to parents when they would love to be able to. It is really welcome that core funding decouples that. We would love to see this applied across the board. We should be focusing on quality and the curriculum and not on attendance.