Terence Flanagan (Dublin North East, Fine Gael)
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Question 188: To ask the Minister for Health and Children if she will respond to a matter (details supplied). [25822/09]

Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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As the Deputy will be aware I have responsibility for the implementation of the new scheme to provide a free Pre-School year of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) which was announced recently by the Minister of Finance. The scheme allows for a number of options in terms of the delivery of the Pre-School Year with the standard models being either 38 or 50 weeks. Under the 38 week model, the requirement will be to provide the Pre-School Year over 183 days (i.e. the equivalent of 36.6 working weeks) which is the same as the primary school year. Service will be asked to operate in a way which is as consistent as possible with local primary schools, closing for public holidays, mid-term breaks, etc. Participating services will be expected to meet their operational costs, including payment of staff in respect of statutory entitlements to paid leave, from within the capitation grant.

The Pre-School Year has been designed to provide children with an appropriate level of programme based activities over a regular timeframe and in settings of an appropriate size and age range. In this latter regard, children availing of the Pre-School Year will fall within a 15 month age cohort. Many parents currently enrol their children in play-school services for 2 years over the 3 to 5 year age range. The ECCE will not prevent them from continuing to do so but will allow them to avail of one of these years free of charge.

It is a fundamental principle of the scheme that it is available to parents free of charge. Services may, however, provide charge parents for additional services provided these are clearly optional to parents and provided appropriate programme based activities continue to be provided to children not availing of such services during the Pre-School Year hours. It is considered that the capitation fee has been set at a reasonable rate for the great majority of services, however, it is accepted that some services may wish to remain outside the scheme, as is the case with some fee paying primary schools.

Information relating to the scheme is available from the Childcare Directorate of my Office and is also on the website at www.omcya.ie. Information packs were sent out to over 4,800 pre-school services earlier this month and I understand that over 300 applications have been processed to date by the City and County Childcare Committees and will now be considered for approval within my Office. Contracts relating to entry to the scheme will be issued to services approved for entry to the scheme from next month.