Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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Question 57: To ask the Minister for Health and Children the progress made on the commitment in the Programme for Government to provide access to a pre-school place for every child by 2012; if this commitment includes the removal of financial barriers for parents wishing to send their child to pre-school; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [34452/08]

Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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As the Deputy will be aware I have responsibility for the National Childcare Investment Programme 2006-2010 (NCIP) which is the successor programme to the Equal Opportunities Childcare Programme (EOCP) which concluded at the end of 2007.

The NCIP has been allocated €575 million over 5 years, and is designed to deliver 50,000 additional childcare places 10,000 of which will be for the 3 to 4 year old age group and 5,000 for school age children. The Programme which is Exchequer funded aims to provide a proactive response to the development of quality childcare supports and services which are grounded in an understanding of local needs.

Preliminary figures collated by Pobal indicate that, approximately 10,500 new pre-school places will be created under the NCIP capital funding committed to date, thus exceeding the programme's target. These places will be in addition to almost 40,000 new childcare places, of which a large number would be in the pre-school age cohort, that were delivered under the EOCP.

The main supports the Government makes available to parents to assist them with their childcare costs are Child Benefit and the Early Childcare Supplement. The latter payment is the responsibility of my Office, and it alone is expected to amount to expenditure of over €500m in 2008. These payments are universal and benefit all parents, regardless of their income, labour market status or the type of childcare they choose. In addition to these universal supports, Government childcare policy has also recognised the need to target additional supports towards disadvantaged families.

The NCIP, the successor programme to the EOCP supports community childcare services to provide affordable childcare to disadvantaged parents. Under this programme the Community Childcare Subvention Scheme (CCSS) was introduced with effect from 1st January 2008. The CCSS has been allocated €154.2 million over the next 3 years, representing a substantial increase in funding over the EOCP staffing scheme (which cost €37 million in 2007), and will continue to support community childcare services to provide reduced childcare fees for disadvantaged parents, complementing the universal supports in place for all parents. Under the new scheme, it will be possible to ensure that the level of grant aid which individual services qualify for will reflect the actual level of service they provide and the profile of the parents benefiting from their service. As part of their application for funding under the new scheme, services are required to ask parents using their services to complete a simple declaration form which is to be included in a return to my Office and on which basis the level of subvention for each service will be determined. The subvention received by services will, in turn, be reflected in the reduced fees for parents who qualify as disadvantaged under the scheme.