Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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30. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs to address concerns that the planned expansion of the community childcare subvention scheme is not taking place due to the low level of subsidy given to private child care providers to take up the scheme. [23059/16]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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My Department has been monitoring the take-up of both the Childcare Subvention programme (CCS) and the Childcare Subvention Programme (Private)(CCSP) places and will be instituting a number of initiatives to increase public awareness of the CCS Programme overall. These initiatives include advertisements on social media sites, local and national newspapers and within community settings and support services. It is hoped that as a result of this campaign, additional families will avail of this programme. Demand for CCS has reduced in 2015 and 2016, possibly partly due to the economic recovery.

The number of applications under the CCSP Programme should increase when the school year starts in September 2016 as services have indicated to my Department that they did not wish to implement the programme mid year.

The Community Childcare Subvention (CCS) programme provides funding to childcare services to enable them to provide quality childcare, including after-school care, at reduced rates to disadvantaged and low income working parents. Parents qualify as disadvantaged or low income on the basis of means-tested entitlements. In the case of full day care, parents qualifying for the higher rate of subvention under the CCS programme can have up to €95 per week deducted from the overall charge for childcare in the participating childcare facility.

At the end of 2015, using savings from that year, my Department lifted the cap on the number of CCS places available through community services and encouraged these services to provide additional CCS places. Since this time, 1,380 additional places have been provided under CCS by Community services and this number is expected to continue to rise.

Budget 2016 provided €16m to create an additional 3,200 (full-time equivalent) Community Childcare Subvention ( CCS) childcare places, or approximately 8,000 places based on average uptake. Traditionally, CCS has only been available through community (not for profit) childcare services of which there are approximately 900 across the country. Eligible families who did not live in an area with a community service could not traditionally access the programme, hence my Department extended the terms of the CCS Programme so that it could be provided by private childcare providers across the country. The Community Childcare Subvention Private (CCSP) Programme launched in March of this year. 1,227 individual children have been approved for funding under CCSP and this number is expected to continue to rise.