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

No. I will come back to that in a moment, and I think the Deputy knows my answer to that. As he said, in the context of the First 5 strategy, we are laying out, using a whole-of-Government approach, the various Departments responsible to support parents in the raising of their children. There will be a new parental leave and benefits scheme for 2019 available to both parents; additional unpaid parental leave; development of supports for family friendly working; and improved information and services for all parents on various aspects of child development. We are establishing a specific unit in my Department to support parents in many different ways. All of that is going on, and it is not insignificant.

On the other side, we have developed a model that subsidises the providers because that is the way we can ensure the control of quality, which I have described previously. As the Deputy also knows, most parents choose to put their children into the free preschool. It is not that parents are not accessing or making that choice. They are, but in addition to all of those we are trying to offer a holistic way of supporting parents largely in the way they describe.

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