Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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656. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the age criteria for children availing of the free preschool year; if the child care option over 50 weeks of two hours and 15 minutes daily is still available; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [3595/14]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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The Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme provides a free pre-school year to all eligible children. Approximately 68,000 children are availing of the ECCE programme in the current school year.

Children are eligible to avail of 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. Children born between 2 February 2009 and 30 June 2010 qualified for the free pre-school year in September 2013 and children born between 2 February 2010 and 30 June 2011 will qualify for the programme in September 2014.

The ECCE programme commenced in January 2010 and a number of transitional measures were included to allow for the flexible introduction of the programme. One of these measures related to the number of weeks over which the free pre-school year could be provided and at that time services were permitted to choose between providing a 38 week or a 50 week model.

The ECCE programme is designed as an educational programme for children and it was intended from the outset that, once the programme had bedded-down, the provision would be delivered using the standard 38 week model only. This is considered the optimal model in terms of ensuring a high-quality early years experience for pre-school children.

The change to the 38 week model only was introduced in September 2012 and all participating services have now successfully made the transition to the new arrangement. There are no proposals to re-introduce the 50 week model.