Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I take the Senator’s point that the matching of demand and supply has to be very local and that applies in a county which has large distances between different towns and villages but investment in early learning and childcare services has quadrupled in the last nine years. It went from €260 million in 2015 to €1.1 billion this year. That increased investment has focused on improving access to affordable and quality early learning and childcare services. The data shows that there are increasing numbers of places for children. There is an increase in the number of services in operation, an increase in the number of staff in the sector and of parents availing of subsidised early learning and childcare.

The Minister and the Government recognise, however, that more needs to be done to ensure quality early learning and childcare is both affordable and accessible to the children and their families and they will continue to prioritise further investments to meet the objective.