Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party)
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Question 169: To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs her plans to change the early childhood care and education scheme for 2013. [24642/12]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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The Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme is implemented by my Department and provides a free preschool year to all eligible children in the year before they commence primary school.

During 2011, officials from my Department engaged in the Comprehensive Review of Expenditure process and scrutinised every area of expenditure as part of this process. Under this review savings of some €16.5 million in current funding have been agreed for this Department for this year. However, this figure reduces when account is taken of the fact that additional funding has been provided to meet demographic pressures arising under the free Pre-School Year in Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme and to protect the universality of that programme. The number of children eligible for the programme this year will increase by some 3,000, resulting in an expected rise of €10 million in the cost of the programme.

While I am pleased that in line with the Programme for Government, the ECCE programme is to be maintained on a universal and free basis and that funding to meet the additional costs of the demographic changes has been provided for, it will be necessary to make some changes to the capitation payments in the school year commencing in September 2012, to meet the need to reduce overall expenditure. A reduction of €2 per week will be made to the capitation rates paid to providers from September 2012. However, to give some flexibility to child care services to manage this modest reduction, the staff to child ratios and the space ratios for the preschool element of child care services only, will be increased in September 2012. The staff to child ratio will increase from a ratio of 1: 10 to a ratio of 1: 11. To allow for the implementation of these new ratios it is proposed that a new space/area requirement of 1.818 square metres per child will be applied. The Water Closet/Wash Hand Basin ratios will also change in line with the adult/child ratios.

To facilitate for the introduction of the ECCE programme a number of transitional measures were included when the programme commenced in January 2010. One of these was the option of providing the free preschool provision over either a 38 week or 50 week school year. As the ECCE programme is designed as an educational programme for children and as it is considered that the optimal model in terms of ensuring a high quality early years experience is the 38 week model, the option of the 50 week model will no longer be available from September 2012.