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

There were a couple of questions there. We have some information about black spots, mainly through the city and county childcare committees. We have just set up a new unit in our Department, a bit like the forward planning unit in the Department of Education, very much designed around a better understanding of where pressure spots are, and we are feeding that information into local authorities for their development plans in order that they might be able to designate more areas as potentially available for childcare. We are just starting that process but it is a recognition we need to do more. We do not have the same levers as those we have with schools, but we nevertheless need to have that level of data.

Every year, some services will probably leave core funding. One of the reasons we have put in that very significant 15% growth in the overall budget relates to the fact we have more money to support services.

We are asking for a fee freeze so we are looking to provide more money through core funding to make up for what services might previously have gotten through raising fees.

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