Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. I caught a small amount of the hearings on TV earlier on today. Yes, we do hope to publish the report by the end of this year.

As the Deputy knows, AIM right now supports access to three hours per day or 15 hours per week for 38 weeks of the year. Our aim at the start is to enhance that to allow up to a full day, and move it beyond the 38 weeks of the ECCE year to the full-year provision. Then we will look to broaden that out to bring in children up to three years old, and we would hope in the future to even look at school-age childcare. AIM is an expensive scheme because it is really good and it works well. I have always said there would be an incremental expansion of AIM, but we have the money from September 2024 to begin that. The beginning is to extend from three hours per day to a full day, and extend beyond 38 weeks per year to 52 weeks per year.

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