Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the Deputy's figures and would be happy to show them to my Department so that they can be fed into our analysis. The Department, Pobal and county and city child care committees are working intensely with these community services and engaging directly with any that is impacted negatively by the change in ratios. Moneys are being made available in 2017 to ensure the sustainability of services. We will consider how to continue doing so for 2018. In addition, it is anticipated that significant income streams for those services and others will increase thanks to the increase in money for the targeted child care scheme, which will begin this year.

We have asked every service that believes it has to close because of the change in ratios as regards community employment workers to engage with us directly. We are hiring financial analysts to work with these services, examine their costs and business models and find individual ways to prevent them from having to close.

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