Ms Teresa Heeney:

To add to Ms Byrne’s commentary, the Bill designates childminders and operators of early-years settings as relevant bodies. There is going to be a requirement for support for all of the people in those roles. As I am sure the committee is aware, the registration of childminders is common practice in other close-to-home jurisdictions such as Northern Ireland and Scotland where these services are registered and inspected. It is welcome that we are moving in the same direction here.

The other outcome of head 10 about being a relevant body is that it should emerge that, not unlike our colleagues to our right here, heads of early-years services operators, be it a childminder or the manager or operator of a setting, will begin to be more regularly consulted about the lives of children who are in challenging circumstances or where Tusla and other arms of Tusla have concerns about a child. These relevant bodies, the operators of settings, have a huge amount of information, as we know, to contribute to that discussion. That has significant resource implications for an early-years service. We would like the committee to be alert to that too. The early-years sector and childminding settings are very happy to be part of that wider system but it brings its own resource implications. We hear from our members who already participate in meitheal arrangements or case conferences that they find themselves at those day-long events and are probably the only person in the room not being paid to be there. It has resource implications and we wish the committee to be alert to that.