Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Táim ag tógáil na díospóireachta seo thar ceann an Aire, an Teachta Roderic O'Gorman. I thank Deputy Ellis for raising this issue. As he will know, the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth supports and funds mainstream early learning and childcare. Its underpinning policy and philosophy is one of inclusion and meaningful participation for all children in mainstream early learning and childcare regardless of ability or additional need. There are no dedicated places in mainstream preschool settings for children with special needs. All places are available to all children regardless of need.

The Department provides the access and inclusion model, known as AIM, which the Deputy has referred to. This supports the participation of preschool children with disabilities in the early childhood care and education, ECCE, programme. The key objective of AIM is to support early learning and childcare providers to deliver an inclusive learning experience. It ensures children with a disability can fully participate in the ECCE programme, thereby reaping the benefits of quality preschool education. AIM support is not based on a diagnosis but on the identified needs of the child.

With regard to wider issues of increasing the availability of early learning and childcare places within Ballymun and Finglas, €69 million has been allocated to the Department to the early learning and childcare sector over the period from now until 2025 under the revised national development plan. This will facilitate and enable significant investment in early learning and childcare. Under the scheme, €9 million was allocated this year in grants to assist in reducing costs associated with energy upgrades and retrofit projects. Work is currently under way on the design and delivery of pillars 2 and 3, which will have a combined allocation of €20 million in 2024 and €40 million in 2025. These phases will support increased capacity and innovation. The capacity grant will fund an expansion of existing services in areas of undersupply. Funding will also be provided to support the development of new services where most needed. The Minister, Deputy O’Gorman, hopes to announce details of the building blocks capacity grant later this month.

In addition to the building blocks capital programme, a range of other steps are being taken to address the issues of undersupply of early learning and childcare Deputy Ellis has spoken about. Under the national action plan for childminding, the Minister has committed to opening up access to the national childcare scheme to parents who use childminders following the extension of regulation to childminders, which is expected to happen from next autumn. The Department is also seeing a significant growth in capacity since the introduction of core funding in 2022. The allocation for year 2 of core funding provided €8.47 million for a 3% increase in capacity, and further funding the Minister secured in budget 2024 provides for a further 3% increase in capacity from September 2024 at a cost of €9.27 million.

In partnership with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, the Department is also in the process of updating the 2001 planning guidelines for local authorities on early learning and childcare settings. In conjunction with the National Disability Authority and Mary Immaculate College, the Department is also commencing the roll-out of the universal design guidelines implementation project to all stakeholders within the sector. This project will commence in late November and the guidelines will be an important resource for the design and building of early learning and childcare facilities. This update will support better planning and development to ensure the provision of key early learning and childcare services. Finally, I am sure the Deputy is aware of the supports available through the Dublin City Childcare Committee for any specific cases he may know of.

See this speech in context