Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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1224. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth if he will address the concerns raised in correspondence (details supplied) regarding reported shortage of crèche places in Waterford city and county; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40555/21]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The play-pod model in Early Learning Care (ELC) and School Age Childcare (SAC) is recommended as an alternative to social distancing between children. The purpose of ‘play-pods’ is to limit the number of people a child has contact with, to facilitate contact tracing, and to support close, positive interactions between children and their adult caregivers. This system also reduces the amount of contact adults have with each other.

As play-pods are an alternative to social distancing, they will need to stay in place for as long as social distancing is required.  Current advice from the HSE is that play-pods are likely to be in place until the end of 2021.

It is important to note that vaccination of staff will not automatically remove the need for play-pods or other public health measures as (a) children may not be vaccinated until a later point and (b) public health advice is that there is not sufficient data at present to demonstrate that vaccination prevents or reduces transmission.

The public health advice from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) is that while there is no evidence base on which to define a maximum play-pod size, play-pods should be kept as small as is likely to be reasonably practical in the specific childcare context.

The maximum adult-child ratios required by the Early Years Services Regulations 2016 and the Early Years Services (Registration of School Age Services) Regulations 2018 are unchanged and so services must continue to operate within them. In most cases there should be either one or two adults in a ‘play-pod’ in order to keep play-pod sizes small. Therefore, play-pod size will be naturally limited by those ratios.

My Department funds 30 City/County Childcare Committees around the country who are available to assist parents in identifying services in their areas. Information on these is available at www.myccc.ie . Information on services registered with Tusla, including contact details and inspection reports, is available on Tusla's website.