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

I propose to take Questions Nos. 37 and 38 together.

A key priority for me as Minister for Children and Youth Affairs is to support the early learning and care and school-age childcare sector through the provision of capital funding where it is most needed. In this regard, I have allocated significant funding in recent years for the creation of early learning and care and school-age childcare places where most needed and for improving the quality of the infrastructure nationwide. In 2019, I have secured a capital budget of €9.606 million for the sector, which will enable us to focus on increasing the number of places available and supporting the transition of services to the forthcoming affordable childcare scheme. Some €6.106 million of the funding has been allocated for the 2019 early learning and care and school-age childcare capital programme.

The funding will be delivered in three strands. Some €4.231 million has been allocated to strand A, which will offer grants of up to €50,000 in value to early learning and care providers for the creation of places for children up to the age of three where there is clear evidence of demand. Some €0.875 million has been allocated to strand B, which will offer individual grants of up to €15,000 in value to aid community and not-for-profit early learning and care services in addressing fire safety issues that have been highlighted in inspection reports by Tusla, the HSE or local authorities. Some €1 million has been allocated to strand C, which will offer individual grants of up to €20,000 in value to school-age childcare providers for the creation of new school-age places where there is clear evidence of demand. Funding will be available nationwide in a competitive process, with the application window open between Monday, 25 February and Wednesday, 27 March 2019. Applications will be appraised on a number of criteria, including demonstration of need, value for money, the capacity of the organisation, that is, its compliance with the scheme rules, project achievability and socio-economic deprivation in the service’s location.

Grants will be allocated to applications of the highest quality. In accordance with the principles of fairness and equity no funding will be earmarked in advance for any particular area in the country such as the north-west part of County Cork.

One of the central aims of the capital programme is to allocate funding for projects where need is clearly evidenced, regardless of the region or area in which a service may be located. The capital programmes are necessarily a budget-limited exercise. The maximum available under each of these strands has been determined in consideration of optimising what can be delivered by each individual grant, as well as maximising the amount of providers and children who will ultimately benefit from the funding.

In addition, I am very pleased to have ensured that childcare was identified a strategic priority in the National Development Plan 2018-2027 and to have secured €250 million capital funding for childcare under the plan. This represents the kind of large scale investment in the sector by the State that has not been undertaken since the wrapping up of the national childcare investment programme in 2010.

This investment will be essential, I believe, to respond to the increased capacity we expect as the new affordable childcare scheme is introduced. The scheme will radically change how this country supports the cost of early learning and care and school age childcare. Research is ongoing in my Department to determine areas of specific need that the national development plan funding will address when it comes on stream in the coming years.

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