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

It is hard to overstate how important GUI is in terms of the scale of research. Interviewing of more than 11,000 people takes place. One group was 12, the other group was 22 and now there is this new group. This has been able to chart major developments. The first group would have been some of the first children to undertake the early childhood care and education, ECCE, programme and was introduced in 2008-2009. We have been able to chart the difference that has made to them. Particularly during Covid-19, we have been able to do a number of snap surveys of the cohorts to assess the impact of Covid-19 on mental health, on general health and on educational attainment. We have been able to compare the pre- and post-Covid-19 results of that. Knowing the status of this large group of people before prior to Covid-19 has given us a real ability to acknowledge the impact of Covid-19 and to devise policy solutions to address those impacts.

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