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

Last year, I established an interdepartmental group to consider options for future investment in early years and after school child care. This group reported to the Government last July, setting out a range of options for future investment to enhance the affordability, increase the accessibility and improve the quality of early years and after school child care.

In the 2016 budget, the Government announced additional annual funding of €85 million for the child care sector to support the achievement of many of these options. This funding represents an increase of 33% in the annual investment in child care supports and provides for the significant enhancement of a number of programmes implemented by my Department. The funding is in addition to the €260 million annual funding already committed to the sector.

The €85 million package of additional investment for child care includes funding for an extension to the early childhood care and education, ECCE, programme from September 2016 so children can enrol in the programme at age three and continue in it until they make the transition to primary school. This will reduce child care costs by an additional €1,500 per child and will increase the current 38 weeks of free preschool provision by an average of 23 weeks, and up to 61 weeks depending on the child's date of birth and the age at which he or she subsequently starts primary school.

The investment will fund a suite of supports to help children with a disability to participate fully in the ECCE programme. This delivers on my commitment to address these children’s particular needs in mainstream preschool settings.

The investment package will provide 8,000 extra places in 2016 under the community child care subvention programme to help low-income and disadvantaged families access quality child care. These 8,000 places are in addition to 5,000 places previously announced with savings achieved in 2015. We will provide a range of measures to improve the quality of early years and school aged child care, including an audit of quality, an extended learner fund to support professionalisation of the sector and an enhanced inspection regime.

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