Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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558. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the capital funding available towards the provision of new child care facilities or the upgrading of existing facilities in 2017; the level of such funding available for the private sector and the community sector; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [40977/16]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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Capital funding of €4.5m in respect of the Childcare Sector was made available in Budget 2017 and I intend to bring forward proposals for a grant funding scheme to access this funding in early 2017. I intend that this funding will be available to childcare services seeking to increase the capacity, quality and/or efficiency of their services.

Over 1,000 services received capital funding under the 2016 capital programme and one of my first decisions as Minister was to provide a €2.5M increase in the funding allocation for this programme, enabling all qualifying applications to be fully funded. The grants that were awarded this year were used to build / fit out / refurbish rooms or extensions to childcare facilities, make alterations to buildings or to buy additional play equipment (to a maximum of €5,000) to facilitate an increase in childcare places. I am pleased that this funding has been fully utilised and a significant number of new childcare places will be available to children entering the ECCE programme in January 2017 as a result.