Dr. Karina Doorley:

We did a report last year to look into the issue in more detail. We examined the Irish data to find out who was using childcare, how much they were using it and so on.

We found that most families are actually using far less than one formal full-time childcare place. Half of childcare in Ireland is informal, in that the service is provided by childminders, grandparents or unpaid carers. The formal sector is important and is subsidised by the national childcare scheme. The informal childcare sector is not subsidised. Any attempts to bring down the cost of childcare through the national childcare scheme are going to affect the out-of-pocket cost of formal childcare for households that use it. They may or may not affect childcare costs for other households that do not currently use formal childcare. They may switch if the incentives are there, but they may not. It is quite difficult to predict what the effect of a massive expansion to the national childcare scheme would look like in the Irish market without structural-----