Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Wynne for raising this important issue and for offering the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, the opportunity to respond. I am taking the matter on his behalf.

A key objective for the Department is for all children to participate in ECCE, the free pre-school programme. The early childhood care and education scheme, ECCE, is a free universal two-year pre-school programme available to all children within the eligible age of two years and eight months to five years and six months. A child must have reached the age of two years and eight months prior to 31 August of the relevant programme year to be eligible. The ECCE programme provides children with a formal experience of early learning prior to commencing school. The ECCE entry age of two years and eight months is based on national experience, a review of international practice and regulations that apply to children of different ages in early learning and childcare.

The access inclusion model, AIM, was introduced in 2016 to ensure children with a disability can access and participate in ECCE programmes. AIM was designed and tailored to support ECCE-aged children and, as such, AIM is directly linked to ECCE participation. The model achieves this by providing universal supports to pre-school settings and targeted supports which focus on the needs of the individual child without requiring a diagnosis of disability. The Department of Education has learned from that model that children can access education without having that diagnosis.

Among other things, AIM can provide for advice and support equipment to children within the ECCE age range and can allow for additional educators to support children with a higher level of needs. Since its introduction in 2016, 32,000 children have availed of targeted supports along with many more children who have been identified through universal measures, ensuring the enhancement of inclusion in services generally. The Government has committed to extending AIM, but developmental work must take place to ensure supports are appropriate. This view is supported by an independent review of AIM involving more than 2,000 stakeholders, with findings that were overwhelmingly positive and which noted strong stakeholder support to extend AIM beyond the ECCE programme. The extension is progressing on a phased basis, so work is under way.

AIM was extended from 2024 to support ECCE-aged children to access and participate in early learning care outside of time spent in the ECCE programme, both in and out of term. The Department is also developing proposals to extend AIM to younger children. This extension will require a redesign of AIM to ensure it meets the different needs of pre-ECCE children and the needs of younger children through the annual budget process funding. Work in this regard is ongoing, and the Department will develop a policy that is reflective of developmental stages of children not yet in the ECCE programme and will ensure the policy is evidence-based and child-centred.

In response to the Deputy's question regarding why I got into politics, I was a manager of a childcare facility where I had an open door policy whereby children of varying needs could attend. It would not have been the norm everywhere that children with various disabilities could actively enter the front door. I also made my office available for the visiting nurse or visiting assessments. I have been clearly supportive of this issue since 2016 when the then Minister, Katherine Zappone, brought forward the AIM programme. Inclusion starts at the very beginning, no different from early intervention. Huge work is under way in the Department of children to look at the eligibility of children younger than two years and eight months to ensure we can capture equal access for all children.

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