Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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Question 688: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the number of State funded early education places; and the way these have increased in the past five years. [27624/06]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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Early Years Education in Ireland covers the period from birth to six years. Almost all five year olds and half of four year olds attend junior infant and senior infant classes in primary schools. Provision for children below the age of four is targeted at specific groups.

Outside of junior classes in primary schools, my Department's main role in the area of early childhood education encompasses pre-school provision for children from disadvantaged areas, for traveller children and for those with special needs.

The Early Start pre-school project operates in 40 primary schools in designated areas of urban disadvantage in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Galway, Drogheda and Dundalk. There are 1,680 places in these centres. Although the Early Start project itself has not been extended in recent years, targeted early childhood education provision is a key element of the School Support Programme (SSP) under the new action plan for educational inclusion DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools), which provides for a standardised system for identifying levels of disadvantage. The objective in relation to early childhood education is to concentrate actions initially on those children aged from three up to school enrolment, who will subsequently attend the 180 urban/town primary schools serving the most disadvantaged communities. My Department will work in partnership with other departments and agencies to complement and add value to existing childcare programmes in disadvantaged communities, with a view to ensuring that the overall care and education needs of the children concerned are met in an integrated manner. A strong emphasis will be placed on adding value to the work of other providers by embedding quality early learning within childcare provision. The Centre for Early Childhood Development and Education will provide advice on the future development and direction of pre-school measures for children in disadvantaged communities.

My Department currently funds 46 pre-schools for Traveller children. With an increasing emphasis on integrated provision, there has been no increase in the number of separate pre-schools for Traveller children in recent years.

In the special needs sector, there are currently 15 pre-school classes for children with autism located throughout the country. The number of such classes has increased from three in 2001. In addition to this, 12 stand-alone autism facilities that provide an applied behavioural analysis (ABA) model of response to children with autism cater for a number of children of pre-school age — there were 3 such facilities in place in 2001 and approval has been given for the establishment of a further two facilities. My Department sanctions home tuition grants for children with autism who are of pre-school age and for whom a home educational programme is considered appropriate — grants for some 380 such children are currently in payment, costing in the region of €7m per annum. While it is not possible to confirm the number of pre-school age children with autism in receipt of home tuition grants in 2001, I can confirm that there has been a substantial increase in the number of such grants sanctioned in recent years. In a small number of cases, my Department allocates funding to service providers to assist them in providing an educational component to pre-school age children in Child Educational Development Centres (CEDCs) and some €300,000 per annum is currently provided in this regard. This funding arrangement was initially sanctioned in 2002.

The bulk of pre-school places in the country are financed by the Office of the Minister for Children and previously by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, which has provided unprecedented levels of funding for childcare in recent years. €499.3m has been allocated to the Equal Opportunities Childcare Programme (EOCP) 2000-2006. The original target of 28,000 new childcare places has already been exceeded and it is anticipated that some 41,000 places will have been created by the time the programme finishes.

The Department of Health and Children also provides grants to childcare groups, including to community groups in areas of social and economic disadvantage.