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

As the Deputy knows, the older funding mechanisms were kept in place for children who were already on the schemes, but we are seeking to move new children coming in onto the new scheme. As long as I have had this role, I have been engaging on this issue. The Deputy has raised it, and I give her full credit for that, but I have engaged on this issue. I have met with the services and listened to the issues. We have introduced some interim solutions to try to get more children into the scheme and give them the full number of hours. We are undertaking the research and we will act on foot of that. That is the way to go. This is an issue that has arisen and I know from engaging with services that they foresaw this, but rather than having a knee-jerk response to it we want to undertake that research to determine exactly how we can bring a fix to the NCS to ensure that it continues to work effectively for everybody and that nobody is left at a disadvantage.

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