John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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352. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs his plans to include children in the free school child care second year (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40562/15]

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 qualified for free pre-school from September 2015. Children who turn 3 from 1 July 2012 are below the age range for eligibility for ECCE in the 2015/2016 programme year but will qualify for the 2016/17 programme year.

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. This extended provision, when fully rolled out, will mean that children will have access to free education - either in pre-school or primary school - from the age of three. 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 127,000 in a given programme year.

I am conscious that, depending on their date of birth, some children enrolling in the ECCE programme in September 2016 will not benefit from this extended free pre-school provision. I am also aware that, when the programme is fully in place (i.e. from 2017), there will be some children will benefit for a shorter extra period of free pre-school than others. Again, this will depend on the child's date of birth and the age at which they make the transition to primary school. Ultimately however, when this extended programme is fully in place, all children will be better off than in the present programme. Indeed, the net effect of the improvements for children overall will be an increase of an average of 23 weeks over the current programme. I think that this is a significant step forward for children and their families.