Jim O'Keeffe (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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Question 168: To ask the Minister for Health and Children, further to Parliamentary Question 187 of 5 July 2006, if the new arrangements for City or County Childcare Committees for the collection of data have been put in place by the Office of the Minister for Children; if not, when this will be completed; the updated figures for the number of inquiries the City or County Childcare Committees have received with regard to voluntary notifications for childminders; the number of notifications the City or County Childcare Committees have received to date since the introduction of the tax exemption; the breakdown of same per childcare committee; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [29598/06]

Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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The number of voluntary notifications made by Childminders to the City and County Childcare Committees (CCCs) since the announcement of the proposed introduction of the Childcare Relief in December 2005, has been monitored by my Office on a regular basis. In April 2006 I provided the Deputy with the latest figures available at that time. I am pleased to be able to respond to the Deputy's latest request on this matter by providing the most recent information, as at 1 September, 2006, presented by the CCCs to my Office, which is summarised in the table below. I have asked that the arrangements in place for the collection of these figures include monitoring the number of new voluntary notifications on a quarterly basis.

As the Deputy will see, while the initial data collection included the number of enquiries received by CCCs in relation to the initiative, the more recent data deals only with the number of voluntary notifications made. While I am pleased to note that the latest figures show a substantial increase since April in the number of voluntary notifications made this year, I would also point out that as the first tax year for which the Relief applies is 2006, and the relevant date for tax returns is the end of October 2007, it is clearly not possible at this stage to estimate what will be the final take-up of the initiative in its first year.

I would also like to inform the Deputy that, to further support the CCCs and Childminders, I hope to be in a position shortly to launch a set of National Guidelines for Childminders which have been developed by the National Childcare Coordinating Committee in conjunction with my Office. The Guidelines will provide a useful resource to the CCCs and to Childminders and are expected to support the further harmonisation and take up of the voluntary notification system.