Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party)
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480. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the reason it is not possible to split the early childhood care and education, ECCE, grant between two service providers for all parents (details supplied); and if she will make a statement on the matter. [32690/16]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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Under the rules of the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme, a child's place cannot be split between different services. Exemptions are only granted in the following exceptional circumstances:

(i) where the parents of a child with a disability choose to send their child to a pre-school in a disability service for part of the week and to a mainstream pre-school for the remainder of the week in order to benefit the child's development or;

(ii) where the parents of a child are separated and have a joint custody agreement, which makes it impossible for the child to attend the same pre-school due to the location of the parents.

The main purpose of the provision of the ECCE place is to support the learning and development of the child. In that respect, early years education supports a child’s development of identity and belonging, as set out in Aistear. This entails the child having secure and consistent key relationships with adults and their peers. Moving a child between two ECCE services would not be considered best practice or in the interests of the child in that context.

Moving a child between services like this will result in additional educational and routine transitions to be negotiated by the child which may impact negatively and cause stress. In addition, if the settings provide divergent curriculum approaches it could be confusing and difficult for the child to adapt and from the setting’s perspective, it may impact negatively on the practitioner’s ability to coherently plan for and assess the child’s learning and development.