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A ‘Swim in Pink’ fund-raiser was held in in Greystones, Co Wicklow yesterday to support breast cancer research. Monies raised will go to the National Breast Cancer Research Institute. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw/The Irish Times
A ‘Swim in Pink’ fund-raiser was held in in Greystones, Co Wicklow yesterday to support breast cancer research. Monies raised will go to the National Breast Cancer Research Institute. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw/The Irish Times
Is free, publicly-funded childcare possible in Ireland?

“We probably get two, three phone calls a week from people desperately looking for childcare,” says Valerie O’Reilly of Rainbow Daycare in Sandyford.

O’Reilly has been running Rainbow for more than 20 years and says she is fortunate to own her premises, as it substantially eases the financial pressure involved.

O’Reilly is supportive of the various Government funding schemes brought about in recent years, designed to support parents and providers. Like more than 90 per cent of operators, she has signed up again to Core Funding, the payment from the State to providers. But she says she has many questions about the proposals that are being floated about a “nationalised system of childcare”.

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