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

I thank the Deputy for those questions and for alerting me to information she is receiving on not having access to broadband in County Leitrim. I will feed that in and get back to her in terms of looking at and assessing that issue. The ultimate success of the national child care scheme is rooted in that. It is also important to say that there is still the possibility of parents making applications on paper to the service provider. It is not the case that it is totally dependent on online facilities. It is worrying nonetheless and I will ask my officials to look at that and see how we can assess risk in that regard.

On the Deputy's second question, the investment in the national childcare scheme and that we will finally have it provides us with a much easier way to increase investment, both at the lower as well as the higher end. It will be my ambition to look for increases on both sides.

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