Written answers

Tuesday, 19 July 2016

Department of Children and Youth Affairs

Early Childhood Care and Education

Photo of Jan O'SullivanJan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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917. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs if she has had discussions with representatives of child care providers regarding the grant funding agreement for the early childhood care and education, ECCE, programme that has been forwarded to them for signing; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [22381/16]

Photo of Katherine ZapponeKatherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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Any scheme funded by Government must have a strong governance regime in place to ensure taxpayers' money is spent appropriately. From the inception of the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Programme, services who chose to provide ECCE were required to sign a contract, or ‘Grant Funding Agreement’.

The review of the DCYA Childcare Programme ECCE Grant Funding Agreement for the 2016/17 academic year was conducted by the Early Years Unit of my Department. This was within the context of the significant expansion of the Programme, which is designed to make high quality and affordable childcare available to more children and families.

To assist the Department during this review process and in order to gain important input from the childcare sector, officials from my Department met with representatives from Early Childhood Ireland (ECI) in June 2016. These representatives included childcare providers from rural and urban settings. At this meeting, ECI representatives were presented with a list of potential amendments to the ECCE Grant Funding Agreement, for discussion and feedback. Officials from my Department also met with delegates from County Childcare Ireland (CCI), the representative body for the City/County Childcare Committees (CCCs), in June 2016. Again, these delegates were presented with a list of potential amendments to the ECCE Grant Funding Agreement, along with an invitation for feedback.

The finalised ECCE Grant Funding Agreement for 2016/17 was published on the DCYA website on the 4th of July 2016. Notification of publication was communicated to all City/County Childcare Committees on the same day, for forwarding on to childcare providers. Childcare providers had been notified that the contracting process for the 2016/17 ECCE Programme would be conducted online, on the Programmes Implementation Platform (PIP), and therefore the ECCE Grant Funding Agreement document was for information purposes only.

The DCYA has issued regular notifications in relation to this year’s online contracting process. In this regard, childcare providers will, from the 29th of July 2016, be able to submit electronic or ‘online’ acceptance of the ECCE 2016/17 Grant Funding Agreement so as to provide the new and expanded ECCE programme.

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