Childcare Services Dail Éireann — 2026-06-23 ============================================================ Mark Wall (LAB), Kildare South I will take up the Minister's second point, or maybe the other point that she made, about planning guidelines. Is she telling the House that she will now be consulted on all planning applications and that this is a first for the Department of Children, Disability and Equality? Has the Department never been consulted on projects such as this because if that is the case, it is worrying? It is an opportunity for us all to get involved in the planning process but, more importantly, her Department will now be involved in planning applications as we move forward, given the lack of childcare that we have all mentioned. Will the Minister confirm that her Department was not previously involved in planning applications as one of the bodies that would be asked to comment on them and that that has changed? Obviously, that will be positive going forward. Is her Department now getting involved in such planning applications? --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-23/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:06+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-23