Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)
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Question 562: To ask the Minister for Education and Science her plans to extend the early start programme to a school (details supplied) in Cork City; if this school was included in the survey to warrant their inclusion in the programme; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [12423/07]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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As the Deputy may be aware, the vast majority of support for child care, including preschool 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 child care 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 preschool children. My Department's main role in the area of early years education encompasses targeted preschool 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 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 the 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. St Patrick's Primary school is one of the Primary Schools identified by the ERC as experiencing a concentrated level of disadvantage and it does mean that the school is included in any additional educational supports which are available under DEIS.