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

I thank the Deputy for his kind comments. I am very familiar with the campaign and am happy to share my thoughts on it. I am on record as saying that, from a personal perspective, I would be in favour of a public model. I am aware, from working with my Department over the years, that the model - if this is what the Deputy means - would cost approximately €2 billion to €3 billion more than what we are currently investing in the education sector.

I am aware of that and, therefore, as Minister I established an independent expert group to examine, on the basis of an increase in public resources, what would be the best public funding model to develop to provide for our children in a way that is genuinely more affordable, while maintaining high quality. This would also make the sector better for the professionals and practitioners who work in it. It so happens that this group has been meeting in recent days. It started its work a number of months ago. Many of its members are from abroad but as of yesterday they were still in town. The group is continuing to plan. If there is a Government that wants to do that the next time around, we have begun the plans already. Norway and the Nordic countries have public moneys and there is some public provision, which means public servants are involved. There is also some private provision. That is called a mixed model and in my view we should aim for that model. We also have to consider that we have 4,500 private providers in the country, between not-for-profit providers and for-profit providers. We will need to move away from private providers if we want a full public model. That is one of the challenges. There are also challenges around increased investment. That is why we needed some good guidance and to see how it is done in other places.

Deputy Funchion asked about moving to the next reopening phase. Hopefully we can just have one scheme for that reopening, even if it is over different phases. There will be an acknowledgement of the need for significantly increased investment, even in that period of time as we move to a new normal. I am not promising that there will be €2 billion available. I do not believe there will be but I have nothing to do with what happens next. I know that conversations are taking place around this and perhaps Deputy Rabbitte could tell us more about them. Perhaps there will be an acknowledgement from the new Government that significantly increased investment is required, not just to provide the same level of care to fewer children as we phase through the reopening, but to learn from some of the things we did in the temporary wage subsidy scheme.

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