Ms Anne Clarke:

I will be brief because everyone else will probably speak to the same things. On the question of the childcare agency, it is still in motion as far as I know. Perhaps Ms Heeney knows more about it. The county childcare committees, CCCs, and all that are coming in together. I have heard nothing further on it.

The sustainability fund was there and people applied to it. The reason people are not applying is that if you are running a business - and childcare is a business - and you have to look for a loan in a year's time or two years' time and suddenly they ask if two years ago you got sustainability funding, you are not going to do it because you are not going to gain from it.