Joe Carey (Clare, Fine Gael)
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256. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the additional child care facilities and subvention that have been put in place for single parents, since the phased changes to the qualification for the one-parent family payment; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [22286/15]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The delivery and/or expansion of child care services is the responsibility of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs (D/CYA).

My Department in conjunction with the D/CYA introduced a range of child care measures in Budgets 2013 and 2014 to assist lone parents to enter, or to re-join, the workforce, namely the after-school child care scheme and the community employment childcare programme. These initiatives build on the existing supports that are provided for, and implemented by, the D/CYA in the child care sector, through which child care is provided to some 25,000 children of low-income parents at reduced rates.

The D/CYA has established a group at senior level to carry out an economic and cost-benefit analysis of policies and future options for increasing the supply, accessibility, and affordability of quality child care, including early years (i.e. early childhood care and education for children aged 0 to 6 years) and after-school (i.e for school-going children) child care. The group is led by the D/CYA and includes representatives from the Department of the Taoiseach, the Department of Finance, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, the Department of Education and skills, the Department of Jobs, Enterprise, and Innovation and my Department. It is intended that it will finalise its work in the summer of 2015.