Senator Bacik and I have been campaigning since February for a catch-up fund for children. The Government must invest in education for children who have lost out on in-school learning over the past year and a half or so. The Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, announced two weeks ago she was working on a multimillion euro fund to this end. She said she would announce it shortly. She was not in a position to say when or how much.

The Tánaiste will be aware that a major controversy has arisen over the catch-up for children fund in the UK. The catch-up tsar resigned over the fact the fund was only £1.4 billion. Does the Tánaiste agree with me that whatever summer programme is rolled out this summer will not be enough to help children to catch up, particularly those in disadvantaged areas or with learning challenges? When will this catch-up fund be announced and how much will be in the fund?

We are over time. I call on the Tánaiste to respond.

I may have picked the Deputy up wrong, but I think he is asking me to agree with him that whatever is announced will not be enough. Perhaps that was a Freudian slip, because that is what he is going to say no matter what is announced. Leaving that aside, this is something that I have called for too, and it is something the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, is working on. We should be able to publish that in the coming weeks. It has not gone to the Cabinet yet. What the Deputy may have been trying to say - I agree with him on this - is that a summer catch-up fund will not be enough. It will need to go beyond the summer and into next year because, unfortunately, those most at risk of educational disadvantaged are the ones who have missed out the most and have fallen behind the most. It is in our interests as a society to make up for that and that is what we intend to do.