James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

At present, the ECCE programme covers children who have reached the age of three years and two months by 1 September of the relevant year. From September 2016, I am expanding this programme to allow children enrol in free preschool from the time they are three years of age and to remain there until they start primary school. That is very important because parents in some instances have felt under pressure to send their children to school earlier than they would otherwise like because of financial considerations. This is a major change to the benefit of children and parents. This extended free preschool provision was first recommended by the expert advisory group on the early years strategy in 2013. It was also one of a series of recommendations of the recent interdepartmental group on future investment in child care, which I established in January last. The group consulted widely with a range of stakeholders, including the early years sector and parents, during the course of its work.

Under this extended programme, there will be three opportunities for eligible children to enrol during the preschool year: children who reach the age of three between April and August will have the opportunity to enrol in September; children who reach the age of three between September and December will have the opportunity to enrol in January; and children who reach the age of three between January and March will have the opportunity to enrol in April. As a result of this extension, the number of children benefitting from the programme is expected to rise from around 67,000 to 127,000 in a given programme year. For the 2016-17 programme year, it is estimated that 89,500 children will be eligible to enrol in the programme from September 2016, with another 22,000 from January 2017 and a further 15,500 from April 2017.

In order to provide the early years sector with the time to build capacity to meet this increased demand, a decision was taken to introduce this new measure from September 2016. As the increased demand for the programme is not expected to peak until January and April 2017, this timeframe should allow preschool providers to make any necessary infrastructural or service changes and to put in place extra staff resources to accommodate the additional demand.

I am satisfied that there is already additional capacity in the early years sector to cope with some of the increased demand. Indeed, the Annual Survey of Early Years Services, which was conducted in December 2014, estimates that there are more than 24,000 vacancies in early years services across the country, with almost 13,000 of these vacancies in sessional services.

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