Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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Question 242: To ask the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the position regarding correspondence about the application by a person (details attached) for staffing grants; when a decision will be made; if there are problems in regard to the application; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4098/05]

Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)
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The equal opportunities child care programme provides grant assistance towards the staffing costs of community and not for profit based child care services which have a clear focus on disadvantage.

The group in question was awarded a staffing grant of €136,824, over three years in August 2000. In addition, it was awarded staffing continuation funding totalling €76,667, up to 31 August 2005. This amount was deemed sufficient to enable the group to maintain its service and meet the targets set.

Funding under the staffing measure of the programme is made available only to those projects which can demonstrate that they provide child care in areas of significant disadvantage and that they support disadvantaged parents to access employment, education or training. It is not intended that the programme will meet the full costs of running a service. The programme makes staffing grant assistance available for a few years, usually three, to enable projects to move towards self sustainability which would normally be achieved when the service is operating at capacity and with an appropriate fee structure.

In several services, the levels of disadvantage among parents are such that the families would be unable to pay economic fees and therefore those services are likely to require ongoing State support towards their staffing costs. My Department is reviewing the arrangements for the ongoing support of such services in very disadvantaged areas and plans to introduce new arrangements to support those services in cases where they will have received staffing grant assistance for three or more years, at any date prior to 31 August 2005. Information regarding the introduction of these new arrangements, which will be effective from 1 September 2005, will be forwarded to the group in question as soon as it is available. In the interim, it would be premature of me to comment further on future staffing grant assistance to this group.