Departmental Schemes Dail Éireann — 2021-07-06 ============================================================ Kathleen Funchion (SF), Carlow-Kilkenny I am glad to hear the Minister's comments because they address the crux of the matter. We raised this issue in May, and I have raised it a number of times since. Following that, some services that had brought it to our attention tried to get in contact about the review. They were led to believe it was a one-year review of the whole NCS, which was not looking at the issue of potential disadvantage. I reiterate that the cohort of children we are talking about are those who will not necessarily come to the attention of Tusla. They are in an in-between category, for want of better words, of children who rely on childcare and early years services for a hot meal and security. It particularly relates to after-school care. We have had that conversation. A lot can be teased out through a review and if the Minister is now clarifying that this issue is being included in it, I welcome that. --- 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/2021-07-06/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:29+00:00 Sitting date: 2021-07-06