Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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Question 101: To ask the Minister for Health and Children her views on whether allowances should be made for the variation in cost between urban and rural areas to the early childhood care education scheme; the reason the scheme provides for 38 weeks rather than the 43 weeks of the primary school year; the reason there is a requirement that children at a young age should attend for the full five days; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [43757/09]

Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I have responsibility for the implementation of the free Pre-School Year in Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) scheme which is being introduced in January 2010. The standard capitation fee which will be paid to participating services is €2,450 per annum. A higher capitation fee of €2,850 per annum is available to sessional playschool services with more highly qualified staff. A wide of range of factors contribute to the individual operational costs of services in any sector, including pre-school service providers. It is not possible to take full account of individual circumstances when establishing a national scheme. Some 4,200 services will participate in the ECCE scheme, a fact which bears out that the capitation rates provided for are reasonable and will accommodate 90% of the pre-school services operating in the State. The pre-school year can be provided under a number of options. Services participating in the scheme as sessional playschool services will generally be required to be open for three hours a day, five days a week. They will be expected to operate for 183 days, which is the equivalent of 36.6 working weeks and is the same number as that required for national primary schools. If for a good reason a sessional service is unable to operate over five days, however, it will be allowed to provide the free pre-school year for three and a half hours a day, for four days, 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 two sessional services each day, while a sessional service may choose to provide two hours 15 minutes per day over 50 weeks.

The objective of new scheme is to provide all qualifying children with a full year of pre-school early education in the year before they commence primary school. Services participating in the scheme will generally be required to provide the free pre-school provision on five days each week and will be required to give priority to parents using the service on this basis. This is considered the most appropriate framework to ensure that children receive an appropriate level of learning involving appropriate programme based activities. A regular pattern of pre-school attendance, for periods up to 15 hours each week, is in line with international practice in this area, and is currently the norm for the majority of sessional playschools operating in the State and availed of by parents who can afford to pay. As the scheme is being offered free of charge it is expected that the majority of parents will choose to avail of the maximum number of hours of the pre-school provision. To allow services to adjust to the requirements of the new scheme, transitional arrangements will apply during the initial period, from January to August 2010. During this period services which are already accommodating children on a pro rata basis, may continue to do so and the capitation grant will be set by reference to the number of children attending per day rather than the total number of children per week. However, for reasons already stated, these transitional arrangements will not extend beyond September 2010 when the first full year of the scheme comes into effect.