Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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27. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs her plans to assist in the provision of additional child care places and-or the upgrading of existing facilities for community and private providers; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [22938/16]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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I was delighted to announce recently that more than €6.5m in capital funding has been allocated through my Department to 1,006 pre-school providers nationwide. This represents an increase of over €2.5m on the amount of €4m announced for this programme in February 2016. This grant has been made available for early years pre-school services, both private and not-for-profit/community, that are intending to expand their service to provide for more capacity in the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme. Grants of up to €10,000 per provider are being provided. The extension of the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) pre-school scheme so that every child will be able to access free pre-school from the age of three until they start school (entering pre-school in the September, January or April after they turn three) is a welcome development for children, parents and Early Years providers.  It will see more than 60,000 additional children enrolled in the programme by April 2017.  Children will now benefit from an average of 61 weeks of the scheme, up from 38 weeks.  In order to ensure that there is sufficient capacity in the sector to provide for these children, this is one of a number of measures my Department has developed to assist services to expand.

My Department is consulting closely with the County Childcare Committees (CCCs), the Early Years Sector representatives and the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government in order to ensure the readiness of preschools to accommodate the additional children enrolling in ECCE from this coming September.

My Department made data available to the 30 CCCs earlier this year detailing the number of children that will be eligible for ECCE in September 2016, January 2017 and April 2017 per Electoral Division. This greatly assisted CCCs and service providers to determine the capacity for business expansion.

My Department has altered ECCE’s rules to allow for higher capitation to be payable to services on a room by room basis. This would allow services with two rooms, but only one graduate, to still receive higher capitation for one of the rooms. This assists services in expanding capacity and incrementally increasing the number of graduates in their employment.

My Department has worked closely with the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government to consider planning issues for services wishing to expand their service. Earlier this year the DOECLG issued a circular to all Local Authorities asking them to assist early years providers with the their planning queries and the pre-planning consultation phase in so far as possible.

Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent)
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29. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs her views on the need for more quality affordable child care, and on maintaining community-based not-for-profit child care facilities for example (details supplied); if she will ensure that they will retain their ethos and not be forced into commercially run childcare facilities with threatened cuts to community employment workers in these facilities; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [23033/16]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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When the Early Years Quality Agenda was introduced in 2013, in order to further improve quality in pre-school services, one of the items to be progressed was the introduction of a requirement that all staff working with children in early years services should hold a qualification in early childhood care and education at a minimum of Level 5 on the National Framework of Qualifications (NFQ) or equivalent. Under new Childcare Regulations, the level 5 requirement came into effect as of 30 June 2016 for newly-registering services and will come into effect for existing services on 31 December 2016. At present, Community Employment (CE) scheme workers form part of the adult:child ratios in some, but not all, community childcare facilities. The new qualification requirement will mean that such workers will no longer be permitted to count towards the required adult:child ratio unless they hold the required minimum qualification.

While I understand that these new regulations may cause initial difficulties in some community childcare services; I am committed to ensuring that all childcare is of an appropriately high quality, and this involves ensuring that every child is cared for by a suitably qualified person, whether a facility is provided on a community-not-for profit basis or not. To support staff to meet the new qualification requirements, my Department established the Learner Fund which has already allocated €3.5 million to over 3,000 staff for the purpose of upskilling. My Department is continuing to support upskilling in the sector and is working with community childcare facilities to ensure their financial viability.

At the request of my Department, the City and County Childcare Committees have established a project to examine the impact of these changes on the sustainability of community childcare services that are currently dependent on CE workers to meet the ratio requirements. My Department has advised childcare providers who consider that the sustainability of their service is at risk as a result of this measure to contact their local City or County Childcare Committee immediately to discuss this matter.

I am committed to making high quality childcare more accessible and affordable to more families. I also greatly value the service provided by Community-Not-for-Profit Childcare facilities.