Ms Frances Byrne:

I thank the Deputy. There are a number of ways to delineate. One of the things that impacts across the board is the burden of regulation and the administration of programmes. That would certainly need to be taken into consideration. For example, our members find themselves in settings around the country and collecting and reporting on information that is duplicated across all the reporting requirements. They have to report into seven agencies and a Government Department. The inspectorate is only one part of that and there are two inspectorates, namely, the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth and the Department of Education. That is an issue. Added to that is the fact that, as we said in our submission, there is no such thing in an Irish context as a typical setting. As the Deputy has said, we have ECCE or preschools. We have preschools that might open in the morning with a breakfast club and to accommodate older children being brought to the school down the road, which is an extra service for children. Some institutions offer pure ECCE preschool care for three hours per day. Some ECCE institutions open again in the afternoon. There is also full day care and school-age care within full day care. There is stand-alone school age care and school age care within schools. The ages of children and what is being delivered, to shorthand the matter for the sake of the conversation, and the nature of service delivery, need to be recognised when the time comes for developing regulations and implementing them through the expectation. That is what we mean.

As colleagues from other organisations have said, there has been extensive consultation. It is certainly the experience of Early Childhood Ireland that Tusla wants to hear from us and hear from settings. It is a red flag to say that we hope that follows this.