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

One statistic that always strikes me is that Traveller children are 10% less likely to take up the free two-year ECCE scheme than children from the settled community. Those kids on day one of junior infants are immediately at an educational disadvantage and they are trying to catch up from day one. We are targeting those early years, but that also includes school-age childcare. It is to recognise that the education element here is so important. There are children who are slipping through the cracks and not getting the benefit of early learning and care. One of the funding streams in the first year will be to support a Traveller officer and a Roma officer in better start, which is the unit in my Department that oversees the implementation of early learning in care. This might not be in year one but we will also be looking at the development of an equivalent to a home school community liaison officer in early years, so there is someone in the area going out and getting kids into early years as opposed to getting them into junior infants. We are starting this in year one. We are not going to do all of equal start in year one, but there is a positive series of measures over the next three years.

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