Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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Question 92: To ask the Minister for Education and Science her plans to expand the Early Start programme; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [10731/07]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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As the Deputy may be aware, the vast majority of support for childcare, including pre-school education, is not provided by my Department, but is now provided by the Office of the Minister for Children under the Equal Opportunities Childcare Programme (EOCP) 2000 — 2006 and its successor programme, the National Childcare Investment Programme.

Under the EOCP programme, close to €500 million has been expended on childcare and places created will be in the region of 41,000 by the time the programme has been exhausted.

Investment of €575 million under the National Childcare Investment Programme 2006-2010 aims to create an additional 50,000 places. 10,000 of these places will be for pre-school children.

My Department's main role in the area of early years education encompasses targeted pre-school provision for children from disadvantaged areas, for traveller children and for those with special needs.

The Early Start Programme is a one-year preventative intervention scheme offered in selected schools in designated disadvantaged areas in Ireland. The objective of the programme, which is managed, funded and evaluated by my Department, is to tackle educational disadvantage by targeting children who are at risk of not reaching their potential within the school system.

The programme currently provides some 1,680 places in 40 primary schools in designated areas of urban disadvantage in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Galway, Drogheda and Dundalk.

Targeted early childhood education provision is a key element of the School Support Programme (SSP) under DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools), the action plan for educational inclusion. The School Support Programme will bring together, and build upon, a number of existing interventions in schools with a concentrated level of disadvantage. While there are no immediate plans to expand the Early Start programme in its current format, it is intended that interventions in the area of early childhood education provision are subsumed into the DEIS action plan and form part of an integrated package of supports for schools identified through the Educational Research Council as experiencing a concentrated level of disadvantage.