Written answers

Wednesday, 2 December 2015

Department of Children and Youth Affairs

Child Care Services Provision

Photo of Thomas PringleThomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent)
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10. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs how the €85 million in funding for child care will improve affordability and accessibility to early childhood care; if there is a reduction in available child care places due to the extra free pre-school year announced in budget 2016; how he will address this sudden increase in demand; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42675/15]

Photo of James ReillyJames Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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The additional €85 million investment announced in Budget 2016 will provide for the enhancement of a number of childcare support programmes implemented by my Department.

This investment will fund a suite of supports to ensure children with a disability can access and meaningfully participate in the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Programme. It will also fund the significant expansion of the ECCE Programme.

At present, children qualify for the free pre-school provision under this 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. The recent Budget decisions, mean that children can access the ECCE Programme from the time they are 3 years of age until they start primary school.

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. In addition, the number of children benefiting from free pre-school provision is expected to increase from around 67,000 to 127,000 in a given programme year.

In order to provide the early years sector with the time to expand provision to meet the increased demand, a decision was made to introduce this new measure from September 2016. This timeframe will allow pre-school providers to make any necessary infrastructural or service changes and to put in place extra staff resources to accommodate the additional demand.

The Community Childcare Subvention (CCS) Programme is also implemented by my Department and supports disadvantaged parents, parents in low paid employment and parents in training or education, by enabling those who qualify to avail of reduced childcare costs at participating community/not-for-profit childcare services.

Due to economic constraints, Budget 2012 closed the CCS programme to new applications from community/not-for-profit childcare services wishing to enter the programme and to the expansion of services by existing providers. Under Budget 2016, I lifted these restrictions and provided €16 million in additional funding to further expand the CCS programme, to include its roll-out to private childcare providers, in a targeted manner. This additional investment will create a further 8,000 places in areas identified as being in significant need of CCS provision.

To meet the increased demand for childcare that will result from this very significant investment, Budget 2016 also provides funding for a number of measures to improve the quality of childcare and to build capacity in the sector. These measures include a restoration of capitation rates to pre-2012 levels for pre-school providers delivering the ECCE Programme, funding to upskilling the workforce and funding for the Early Years Capital Programme 2016.

In addition, and in recognition of the significant barriers childcare presents to parents wanting to take up employment, education or training, and the complexities of working through the different childcare programmes funded by my Department, the Budget 2016 package also funded the establishment of a dedicated Project Team to develop a single Affordable Childcare Programme to provide working families with good quality childcare at a cost they can afford. Work on the Affordable Childcare Programme will begin immediately, so that it can be in place in 2017. This single programme will replace the existing CCS, along with the Training and Employment Childcare programmes, comprising the After-School Childcare, Childcare Education and Training Support, and Community Employment Childcare. It will provide a new simplified subsidy programme, available through both community/not-for-profit and private childcare providers. As more investment is made available over the coming years, it can be directed to families through this subsidised programme. The objective is to make childcare more affordable for more families.

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