Mr. Toby Wolfe:

To clarify, the focus of Part VIIA of the Child Care Act is on early learning and care, in addition to school-age child care. With regard to early learning and care, I am referring to preschool services, for example, rather than healthcare assistance, which is a matter for the HSE and health system more broadly. That said, we do know that early learning and care can be very beneficial to children with disabilities or additional needs. The access and inclusion model, AIM, programme has helped a large number of children with disabilities to get into the early childhood care and education scheme, ECCE, the universal preschool programme. There is a pilot under way with the HSE involving the extension of some of the HSE's home care or healthcare assistance arrangements to support children in attending preschool services, but that is separate from the proposals on childminding. The definition of childminding proposed to be introduced in the Child Care Act is specifically related to childminders working in childminders' homes rather than parents' homes.