Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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300. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the date to which she is operating to for the notification of each ABC project of their funding for 2017; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [6308/17]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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The Area Based Childhood (ABC) Programme is a prevention and early intervention initiative led by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs. The ABC Programme commenced in 2013 and is a time-bound co-funding arrangement of €29.7m for the period 2013 to 2017 in conjunction with The Atlantic Philanthropies.

All sites are currently in contract for 2017 and operating according to their agreed budgets for 2017. Due to contractual arrangements, each of the existing 13 sites is scheduled to come to the end of their contracts at various points throughout 2017.

My department secured an additional €4.5million in Budget 2016 to extend all of the existing ABC Programme to the end of December 2017, bringing the total investment to €34.2 million. This means that sites being granted an extension to their original contract, may require additional funding.

To ascertain this, my Department requested that the ABC Programme Managers provide the Department with revised financial projections and information on the cyclical nature (including costs) of the various interventions/programmes implemented by each Area. The information currently to hand does not fully indicate the additional funding required by these sites. The programme managers will now be requesting additional detail from each site and, once received, it is expected that funding allocations can be agreed upon and all ABC areas notified by end February.

I look forward to the continued engagement of all ABC sites with my Department in 2017 as we work towards the implementation of quality prevention and early intervention initiatives in order to achieve our shared goal of improving the lives of children and families throughout the country.