Ms Teresa Heeney:

To conclude the point Ms Byrne made very well, planning systems are available to the Government. The Department of Education has a forecasting system and knows where children are living. It would seem to make sense that the Department would be able to access that system. Ms Duggan spoke earlier about the demographic change in her local area. That is very worrying for an operator that might have 40 children this year, 35 next year and 30 the following year. That is not sustainable for a well-planned system and it should not have to be like that, if data are being used and forecasting is being conducted. I referred to our closures policy, which we introduced today. Equally, if we were forecasting properly, perhaps with a role for local government, we should be able to avoid at least some of the closures that have the potential to happen in an area where the children are ageing out of the early years system.