Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)
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Question 98: To ask the Minister for Health and Children the status of the free pre-school year scheme; if she will provide an overview of the way this scheme is to operate; the number of pre-schools that are participating in the scheme; if she is confident that there will be a place for each eligible child; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [39793/09]

Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I have responsibility for the implementation of the new free Pre-School Year in Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) scheme which will be introduced in January next.

The scheme is open to all commercial and community pre-school services, including both sessional playschools and crèche facilities, which are notified to the Health Service Executive (HSE) or registered with the Irish Montessori Educational Board (IMEB). Children will be eligible to avail of the pre-school year where they are aged more than 3 years 2 months and less than 4 years 7 months on 1 September each year.

A key requirement of the scheme is that pre-school leaders must hold a certification for a major award in childcare / early education at a minimum of Level 5 on the National Framework of Qualifications of Ireland (NFQ) or an equivalent recognised qualification in the childcare / early education field. In the first two full years of the scheme, the qualification requirement will be met where a person holds an award in ECCE that includes the four core modules of Early Education, Child Development, Caring for Children and Work Experience and has at least 2 years experience of working in a position of responsibility with children aged from birth to 6 years.

It is a condition of the pre-school year that services which wish to participate will be required to provide an appropriate educational programme for children which adheres to the principles of Síolta, the National Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education. Síolta is a quality assurance process which addresses all aspects of practice in early childhood care and education services. It is designed to support practitioners to develop high quality services for children aged from birth to 6 years.

An annual capitation fee of over €2,450 will be paid to participating services in return for the provision of a free pre-school year to each child. Payments will be made to services at the beginning of each term. A higher capitation rate of €2,850 per annum will be paid to sessional playschool services where all childcare workers have qualification levels above the minimum requirements for the scheme. To qualify for the higher capitation rate all Pre-School leaders in the service must hold a level 7 or 8 qualification relating to childcare and have 3 years experience working in the sector, and all assistants must hold a relevant level 5 qualification.

It is a fundamental principle of the scheme that it is available to parents free of charge. Services may, however, 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. Services participating in the scheme should be satisfied that they will be in a position to meet all of their costs from the capitation provided and additional funding will not be provided where this is not the case.

Services can provide the Pre-School Year from a range of options. A full or part-time day-care service will normally provide the place for 2 hours 15 minutes a day, five days a week over 50 weeks. A playschool sessional service will normally be required to provide a pre-school service for 3 hours a day, five days a week over 38 weeks. However, where for good reason a sessional service is unable to operate over 5 days, it may participate in the scheme by providing a place for 3 hours 30 minutes a day, 4 days a week over 41 weeks.

Further flexibility is provided for in that, a full or part-time service may choose to provide a sessional service over 38 weeks of a year (or 2 sessional services each day) while a sessional service may choose to provide 2 hours 15 minutes per day over 50 weeks. Also in cases where children attend a full or part-time day-care service for 3 days a week only, consideration will be given to allowing the service to participate in the scheme on the basis of providing the pre-school year to those children for 3 hours 45 minutes a day for 3 days a week. In such cases, a service will be required to provide the pre-school year over 50 weeks.

Applications by approximately 4,200 childcare services to enter the new scheme are currently being processed by my Office. It is expected that a list of services approved to participate in the scheme will be available shortly from the City and County Childcare Committees (CCCs). Based on the applications to date, I am confident that the total number of places available in pre-school services applying to enter the scheme will meet the number of places required.

When the scheme was announced in April, I stated that there was a possibility that geographic pockets might exist in January where demand for places would exceed supply, requiring parents to travel further than they would wish for their child to avail of a place. However, with less than 2 months until the scheme goes live, my Office would have anticipated that affected parents would be in contact at this stage to say that they were unable to avail of a place locally, and this has not been happening, except in a very limited number of cases where the parent was unaware of local pre-schools participating in the scheme. I would hope, therefore, that this will be a very limited problem.

Nevertheless, my Office is putting mechanisms in place whereby services with excess capacity in January will be identified to the CCCs, thereby allowing them to advise any parents who may have difficulties in finding a place for their children. My Office and the CCCs will also continue to monitor the situation next year to ensure any shortfalls which may occur would be met in September 2010.