Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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776. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs when the new non-contact grant for child care services will be rolled out and first instalments paid to the services. [37192/16]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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I have made €14.5m available to provide an additional payment to childcare providers to recognise the increasing volume of work done outside of direct contact hours with children. This funding will provide an additional payment of 7 days' funding to all ECCE Services - and an equivalent level of payment to CCS and TEC services.

This will enable ECCE providers to be paid for a 39th week and part of a 40th week (7 ECCE days in total or 1.4 ECCE weeks) where they will have no children present and they will be able to pay staff to concentrate on administrative workload. Services themselves can decide how to use the payment when it is received. For the average ECCE service with 25 children, this will mean an additional annual payment of approximately €2,400 per annum.

A decision on when this payment will occur will be made by my Department in due course.