Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I was pleased that significant additional funding was allocated to early child care in budget 2017. The largest volume of additional funding was provided to enable the full year costs of the expansion of the ECCE scheme into a second year, and I provided €67.6 million for this. In addition, the full year roll-out of the access and inclusion model, AIM, within the ECCE scheme was provided for with an allocation of €18.07 million.

€12 million was provided to supplement existing funding provided for child care available on a targeted basis to families from lower income backgrounds. This funding will facilitate the replacement of a number of schemes with new single affordable child care scheme from September 2017. A further €7 million was provided for a universal subsidy to be available to all children using formal child care who are aged 6 months to 3 years, or when they start ECCE if they are older. This will also be available from September 2017 as part of the new single affordable child care scheme.

I have made €14.5 million available to provide an additional payment to child care providers to recognise the increasing volume of work done outside of direct contact hours with children. This funding will provide an additional payment of seven days' funding to all ECCE services and an equivalent level payment to CCS and TEC services. I have provided €1 million to enhance the level of inspection of child care services provided by Tusla and the Department of Education and Skills, and a fund of €1 million to facilitate research into the sustainability challenges faced by community child care services, in particular, and to develop a process for addressing these. This additional funding will bring my Department's budget for early years from €345 million to €466.5 million, an increase of 35% on 2016.

Additional funding will be required in 2018 to meet the full year costs of some measures being introduced for September 2017. In the case of the new single affordable scheme, estimated additional full year costs in 2018 are approximately €44 million. Factors such as demography and uptake of schemes will also be important in determining the exact amount of additional funding that will be required in 2018.

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