Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

There was no detailed information. In particular, many of the providers lobbied because they were unclear about it, which was fair enough because it was a big change. However, it was also difficult for the Government side to do that. The Senator is now asking us to make exact statements in great detail. Since January, my Department and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs have been examining the extra provision required and where places are required. There are 61,000 places, comprising 17,000 in community providers and 44,000 in private providers. A further 1,000 places are covered by the community child care subvention and there are 2,800 places in the child care education and training scheme. For after-school care, there are 15,864 places in the national child care investment programme, amounting to a total of 75,297. There is a great deal of provision and I have not yet touched on primary schools all over the country. We have a range of child care facilities and some or all of them have the capacity to provide an expansion in the number of places. Senators asked me about the Government's budgetary agreements for 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016. I cannot speak about that because I cannot make an announcement until the budget is decided and the Minister for Finance makes his announcement. The work has started and is ongoing between the Department of Children and Youth Affairs and the Department of Social Protection. The Minister for Education and Skills has been strongly supportive in discussions about the requirement to expand child care in Ireland.

We are trying to make a number of changes to social welfare in Ireland. The critical one is that we want people of working age, whether on the traditional jobseeker's payment or parenting on their own, to be provided with a platform and a base on which to continue education and training and, ultimately, to be assisted by the enormous figure of €20 billion we invest in social welfare. They must be helped to get back to work or start their own businesses and to progress to financial independence.

This is a major change to what happens to people on social welfare in this country. It is a demanding change for everyone involved but this country must change in order to improve the outcome for children at risk of poverty. The study last week showed a particular risk for children in one parent families.