James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator for raising the matter, which has also been raised with me by his constituency colleagues, Deputies Joe Carey and Pat Breen.

The Spraoi community child care centre is a community-based, not-for-profit child care facility that provides child care services for the local community in Milltown Malbay. This child care service is one of more than 900 community child care services located throughout the country and managed by local communities, as the Senator outlined, on a not-for-profit basis. These community services play a very important role in the provision of child care services and particularly in the provision of services for disadvantaged and low-income families. Spraoi community child care is participating in the three major child care support programmes funded by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs. The funding is provided directly to participating child care services which have children enrolled that satisfy the programmes' eligibility criteria.

Spraoi is funded under the community child care subvention programme, which provides funding to not-for-profit community child care services to support disadvantaged and low-income working parents. Participating services qualify for funding on the basis of the level of service they provide and the profile of the qualifying parents eligible for support.

The group is also funded under the early childhood care and education programme, which provides a free preschool year to children in the year before they commence primary school. Funding is also provided under the training and education child care programme, which supports parents who are entering or returning to the workforce or who are participating in training or educational courses to facilitate a return to work.

The total funding provided to Spraoi under these programmes in the academic year 2013-2014 amounted to approximately €122,000. The final funding provision for the current school year in respect of the community child care subvention programme will not be determined until later in the school year, but the group has received a preliminary payment of €26,308, based on last year's figures. The group has already received almost €21,000 in funding for the early childhood care and education programme since August 2014 and can expect to receive a further €15,000 between now and the end of May, based on current enrolments. Funding in respect of the training and education child care programme will be determined by the number of children enrolled in the service during the course of the year whose parents qualify for support under the programme.

I assure the Senator that my Department will continue to provide funding to Spraoi, based on the numbers of qualified children enrolled in this service under each support programme. In addition to the above funding, Spraoi received more than €33,000 from the 2014 early years capital programme, which was targeted towards refurbishment projects in community child care services. I understand that Clare county child care committee, which is funded by my Department to provide support to parents and child care services in the region, has given advice and support to this group on previous occasions and I have been assured that the committee is in a position to offer advice and support again now. I would strongly urge the Spraoi management to engage with the county child care committee to ensure that this important local child care resource can be put on a sustainable footing for the benefit of all the young children and families in the area that need these services. I would ask that the group examines its participation in all of the child care support programmes and engage with officials my Department to ensure that the maximum levels of funding available under the programmes are being utilised.

As the Senator knows, this Government allocates in the region of €260 million annually to provide for the child support programmes and approximately 100,000 children benefit each year from this investment. This funding has been maintained despite the difficult economic situation that has prevailed in recent years. The majority of this funding is targeted at those families most in need of support and it is important, therefore, that those child care services, particularly community services, which benefit from this funding are prudently managed so that the real beneficiaries are the young children who would not otherwise be a position to avail of high-quality child care services. We strongly wish to support these facilities and to ensure these services remain. I thank the Senator for raising the issue.