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

I thank the Deputy. Starting with his last question first, and I think I tried to answer this before, it is reasonable to ask why it took so long. I heard the frustration from the healthcare workers as well and I spoke to many of them myself. I went on radio and was public about saying I thought we should have it, and this was before there was a decision by Dr. Tony Holohan and the National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET to say yes, it was okay. The issue they were grappling with was the potential public health risk. Ultimately, they made a decision that we could begin and it will begin on 18 May. My Department and officials have been preparing for that for a number of weeks. We will put that in place and we hope we are ready. It is not going to be straightforward, I am sure. There is a lot in that. That is why it took so long. We are ready. It is not going to be straightforward and I am sure there are going to be difficulties and challenges. From my perspective and that of my Department, we were not responsible for that. It was the responsibility ultimately of the experts who were offering the advice to Government.

The Deputy talked about the issues within the sector, of which I am fully aware and, as I indicated, I have tried to address many of them in different ways over the past four years. By the way, in the last year before 2000, I think I was actually the first one to hold a childcare march when I was chief executive of the National Women's Council. We went down O'Connell Street and I had lots of people behind me.

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