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

Absolutely. I am happy to engage with the Deputy, particularly on the socioeconomic discrimination ground that I hope to bring forward in that draft legislation. As regards her wider point on poverty, its impact on people and the report launch she attended, a key step my Department was able to take in the budget this year is the introduction of the new equal participation model in early years. It is a DEIS approach for early years which recognises there are particular early years services that have a significant number of young people who may be from a Travelling community, a migrant background or an area of high socioeconomic disadvantage and those young people need more support. We have the funding for that for year 1 and will start its roll-out in September 2024. It will take several years to ramp it up fully but that will be a major intervention in terms of making sure all young people can access early learning and childcare and helping them get the best start early on in life.

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