Niall Collins (Limerick, Fianna Fail)
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175. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs his views on the difficulties being experienced by child care providers arising from the policy of Pobal in insisting that funding for community child care places is provided to the child, and if the child leaves the funding is withdrawn; his plans to change the system; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [29239/15]

James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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My Department implements a number of childcare support programmes to assist parents to access quality childcare services.

The Community Childcare Subvention (CCS) programme provides funding to community childcare not-for-profit services to enable them to provide childcare at reduced rates to disadvantaged and low income working parents. This programme support some 25,000 children each year. Pobal has responsibility for the new Programme Implementation Platform (PIP) system which has streamlined the implementation and administration of all childcare programmes. The introduction of this new system did not result in any change to the administration criteria of the CCS programme.

There are in the region of 900 community childcare services participating in the CCS programme and they qualify for funding on the basis of the level of service they provide and the profile of the parents benefiting from their service. Support is provided to parents based on information gathered during a designated week in the month of October, and it is only parents who satisfy the qualifying criteria in this particular week who qualify for support under the programme. If a child leaves the service after qualifying for CCS support, they may be replaced by another eligible child. In this situation the service retains this funding until the end of that school year. However, during the course of the year if a substantial number of children leave the service and are not replaced, the CCS funding to the service will be reviewed.

The Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme, which provides the free pre-school year to eligible children, and a number of programmes that support parents returning to the work force are also implemented by Pobal through the new PIP system. The criteria for the administration of these programmes has not changed. If the Deputy wishes to clarify further what the issue is, I will ask my officials to examine the matter again.