Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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632. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs if he is aware that the budgetary decision regarding the second year of the early childhood care and education scheme will effectively exclude all children born between September 2012 and February 2013; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38188/15]

James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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At present, children qualify for the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme when they are within the qualifying age range which is 3 years and 2 months to 4 years and 7 months in the September of the relevant year. This means, for example, that children born between 2 February 2011 and 30 June 2012 will qualify in the school year commencing in September 2015.

The recent Budget decisions, which introduced an extended provision under the ECCE programme that allows children to access the free pre-school programme from the time they are 3 years of age until they start primary school, come into effect from September 2016. The start up date for the introduction of this new measure was decided so as to allow pre-school providers an adequate timeframe to make any necessary infrastructural or service changes and to put in place extra staff resources to accommodate the additional numbers benefiting from the programme - which is estimated to increase from 67,000 to over 127,000 children in a given year.

Children born between September and December 2012 will avail of 38 weeks of free pre-school while children born between January and February 2013 will avail of 38 weeks of free pre-school (if they start school at age 4) or 76 weeks of free pre-school (if they start school at age 5).

When the extended ECCE programme is fully in place from 2017, the number of weeks of free pre-school a child will benefit from will depend on their birth date and on the age at which they start primary school. This number ranges from 38 weeks (for children born between April and August who start school at age 4) to 88 weeks (for children born between January and March who start school at age 5). This equates to an estimated 23 additional weeks on average.