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

One of the disadvantages of the system, which is a privately driven system, is that where there is a gap in provision in a geographic area, unlike in a primary or secondary school where the State steps in and sources a site, the State does not have the capacity to do that right now. It is about putting in place a funding model that supports new services and some of the organisational infrastructure that can co-ordinate that. We have city and county childcare committees at the moment. They do great work. The idea of identifying core demand in a particular geographic area and being able to act on it is not a capacity that we have right now. We are looking at how we target money to the right geographic areas to make sure that we are delivering the necessary services. We need to do that work. Our building up of childcare through extensive investment has been quite ad hoc, and it is important to plan, particularly if, over the next seven to eight years, we are going to be putting an additional €450 million into the area as was committed to under First 5.

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