Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As part of the budget for 2013, together with my colleague the Minister for Social Protection, I was pleased to announce a new after school child care initiative which will be targeted at low-income families and supporting parents availing of employment opportunities. The initiative is expected to receive full year funding of €14 million to provide more than 6,000 quality after school places for children attending primary school, as well as supporting parents to take up employment. Lack of access to affordable, quality child care is a significant barrier to many low-income and disadvantaged families when seeking to avail of work and training or educational opportunities . Today's edition of The Irish Times outlined this again in the findings of the OECD report on Irish women.

By providing more than 6,000 after school child care places, the initiative will provide an important support measure to enable parents to avail of job opportunities.

This is in line with the Government's overall strategy to support parents of low-income families to take up employment and demonstrates how Departments are working together to deliver the Government's agenda on promoting employment and supporting children's development.

The new after-school child care scheme will further augment my Department's programme of child care supports for low income families. These include the CCS, CETS and ECCE schemes, which provide subsidised child care, including for qualifying parents who are on approved VEC and FÁS education and training courses. Almost €71 million will be spent next year on the CCS and CETS programmes, supporting more than 30,000 child care places.

Officials in my Department and the Department of Social Protection are working to finalise the details of the after school scheme and its operational arrangements. As is the case with the CETS scheme, the new scheme will be open to both community and commercial child care providers across the State and it is anticipated that places will become available on an interim basis from early 2013 with the full rollout of the programme commencing in September 2013. As soon as this work has been completed between my Department and the Department of Social Protection I will correspond to the Deputy to give him further information.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House.

My Department also implements the universal free pre-school year in early childhood care and education, ECCE, programme, under which all children have equal access to free pre-school education in the year before commencing primary school. Some 65,000 children are currently availing of the ECCE programme at an annual cost of some €175 million.

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