Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

472. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the number of additional preschool inspectors that will be employed State wide and in each county up to December 2014 as a result of the €4.5 million budget increase; and the proportion of that investment that will be spent on preschool mentoring and support staff training in that period. [44607/13]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

On foot of last week's budget, I will be allocating €4.5m in Exchequer funding to support the implementation of the Pre-School Quality Agenda which will seek to support and assure higher standards in pre-school services.

Of this funding, €2.5m is being provided for the introduction of a new mentoring service for pre-school services and €1.5m is provided to support staff training to meet the new qualification requirements recently announced by my Department.

€0.5m of the funding will be allocated towards the cost of taking on additional pre-school inspectors. Additional funding is expected to be raised from a new model of annual registration fees payable by pre-school services, to be introduced as part of statutory registration.

The number of additional inspectors recruited to the Pre-School Inspectorate as a result of the funding allocated, and the location of these posts, will be a matter for the Child and Family Agency which is due to be formally established in January 2014.