ABSTRACT
My first encounter with John Bennett was to be the start of a warm and affectionate friendship. Our first meeting happened under rather unusual circumstances and, in many ways, encapsulates the type of man John Bennett was. In 2002, John as secretariat member of the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) came to Dublin with a review team of three experts for a 10-day fact-finding mission to inform the OECD review on Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) in Ireland. In 2004, Ireland’s country note: the Thematic Review of Early Childhood Education and Care Policy in Ireland (OECD, 2004) was published. On the invitation of the Department of Education and Science (now Skills) John met with ECEC representatives and visited early childhood services including a Traveller preschool. 1 Between 1984 and 2010, there were segregated Traveller preschools in Ireland
