Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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Question 333: To ask the Minister for Health and Children the amount of funding she proposes to make available to 30 child care services for capital funding from the national child care investment programme; the funding available for such purposes from the NCIP; the origin of the funding, in the context of the county and city child care committees being informed that no further capital allocations would be made under the NCIP; the applications which will be progressed; the basis upon which such funding was decided; and the purpose for which it is to be utilised. [30282/09]

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 (NCIP) 2006 - 2010 under which capital grant funding is made available to community and commercial childcare providers for the development of childcare facilities. Applications for capital grant funding under the NCIP were processed, in the first instance, by the City and County Childcare Committees (CCCs). To assist them in this process, each CCC was advised of the indicative capital budget against which they should prioritise applications during 2008. The total indicative capital budgets advised to the CCCs for 2008 amounted to €125 million. Having assessed and prioritised capital grant applications against their 2008 indicative capital budgets, the CCCs forwarded the applications received by them to Pobal, who manage the day to day implementation of the NCIP on behalf of my Office, in June 2008.

A further assessment of the applications was carried out by Pobal and resulted in applications with a total value of €85 million being forwarded for consideration and approval by this Office in Autumn 2008, coinciding with the economic downturn and the review of Government expenditure which took place at that time, particularly in relation to the undertaking of additional capital commitments. It was necessary to defer any decision in respect of new capital commitments pending the outcome of the expenditure review. In April 2009, this Office was advised that no further capital commitments could be undertaken at that point and the closure of the NCIP capital programme to new applicants was announced.

In discussions with the Department of Finance, this Office pressed to secure some additional funding to enable projects which were considered to be high priority to proceed. Key criteria in determining priority applications were severe disadvantage and where an existing community service was in danger of closure if necessary repairs required by the HSE Inspectorate could not be carried out. As a result, it was agreed that additional funding amounting to €10.6 million, to assist 29 applicants, would be allocated to the programme in 2010.