Billy Timmins (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Question 454: To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the position regarding the case of a person (details supplied) in County Wicklow. [21332/11]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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The Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme was introduced in January 2010 and provides a free pre-school year to all eligible children in the year before commencing primary school. Almost every pre-school service in the State is participating in the ECCE, ensuring that it is available to children in all areas, and 63,000 children, or 94% of the eligible age cohort, are currently availing of the pre-school year.

Children qualify for the free pre-school year where they are aged more than 3 years 2 months and less than 4 years 7 months at 1 September in the relevant year. This means that children born between 2 February 2007 and 30 June 2008 qualify for the free pre-school year in September 2011. There is no provision under the programme to enrol children who are below the qualifying age, and children born in July and August of 2008 will qualify for the programme in September 2012.

The ECCE programme is available to all eligible children and it is a matter for parents to decide if they wish their child to avail of the scheme or if they wish to send their child to primary school. The objective of the programme is to make early learning in a formal setting available to eligible children in the year before they commence primary school. To achieve this, services participating in the pre-school year are expected to provide age-appropriate activities and programmes to children within a particular age cohort. For this reason, it is appropriate to set minimum and maximum limits to the age range within which children will qualify.

A number of parents have asked for the lower age range to be reduced on the grounds that they wish to send their children to school when they are 4 years and 2 months of age or less. The issue was referred by some of these parents to the Office of the Ombudsman for Children. That Office found no reason to remove or amend the lower age range, accepting it as reasonable having regard to the various factors which apply.