Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)

It is an absolute objective of this Government to ensure that we make provision for children of all ages. More specifically, the Deputy is interested in school-age childcare. We have had some very significant innovations I can point to. For example, in my time as the Minister for Education, I published procedures on the use of school buildings and sports facilities outside of school hours. The purpose here was to ensure that in the first instance community opportunities would be utilised such as school buildings and sports halls, and very specifically that there would be opportunities for early learning and childcare providers to make use of school buildings or whatever, in this instance because the building would be empty after school and would be in an ideal location for after-school services. There are now 565 school-age childcare-only services located on school premises, which represent almost two thirds, or 59%, of school-age childcare-only services in operation. That is quite significant. We need to do more work in this space with schools.

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