The Government has also provided a financial commitment of more than €436 million funding for my Department's Equal Opportunities Child Care Programme 2000-2006 to facilitate the development of a well structured and high quality child care service to help parents to meet their child care needs and to enable them to remain in or return to employment, training and education. The increased maternity leave entitlement applied in 2001 alleviates, to a degree, the demand for high quality affordable child care for babies under the age of 12 months. This complemented the equal opportunities child care programme which aims to increase the supply of child care places by 50% over the seven years of the programme and early indications show that these targets will be met.