Dr. Tom McDonnell:

We talked about capacity constraints and lack of construction workers, but childcare workers is another one as well. Part of it is with a longer-term goal of essentially making childcare a public service, but we would start in the areas where there is no competition or private provision.

That is going to be areas which by and large are low-income households because they cannot make profits there. Of course, that embeds the fact that the options for working are not there for lone parents in those areas. It creates a vicious circle. We are trying to get in there to break that to a certain extent, or to at least remove one of the many barriers. It is also with a view to showing proof of concept and that this can work and move to a place where childcare workers become public sector employees over the longer term with all of the advantages and career possibilities associated with that. That ultimately improves standards within a sector as well. We know that caring as a profession will be one of the growth areas of employment in the next 20 or 30 years, not just for children, but elder care will become very important. Begin the process now of making caring a full profession that we treat as such. It historically has not been done because caring was often not marketised or monetised and therefore, misogynistically, it was not given full value. It is still not to this day. That was the idea.