Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is absolutely right about the need for that element of wider support. When she put down a motion on this in the last term, we had a good discussion about some of the key things that are happening in the Department around workforce planning, looking at building real careers for childcare professionals, as well as the operational model which I brought through Cabinet and in terms of the expert group looking at the overall funding of childcare, how it is funded in other countries and drawing useful comparisons. As such a large body of work is being done at the moment, some of which was begun by my predecessor and some of it by me. By the middle of next year, we hope to have substantive pieces of research done upon which we can look to build the future vision of childcare.

On the Deputy's specific question, the city and county childcare committees can engage with parents and give them advice about other services which have vacancies in situations where a childcare service has ceased to operate.

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