Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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383. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the cost of maintaining all targeted childcare schemes, such as the community childcare subvention, in tabular form. [19101/17]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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Budget 2017 provided an additional €19m to enable the introduction of more affordable childcare from September. This additional funding includes development costs for the Single Affordable Childcare Scheme (SACS) and is in addition to the existing funding of €86 million, which supports the current targeted schemes, specifically, the Community Childcare Subvention (CCS) Scheme and the Training and Education Childcare (TEC) schemes (i.e. Childcare Education and Training Supports (CETS), After-School Child Care (ASCC), and Community Employment Childcare (CEC).

The current budget for these targeted childcare schemes for 2017 is presented below. These figures take account of planned enhancements to existing targeted childcare schemes from September, which were announced yesterday. These enhancements include:

- A new universal childcare subsidy for children aged from 6 months up to 36 months old (or commencement of the free pre-school programme (using registered childcare) via an enhancement to the CCS scheme; and

- Significant increases, some up to 50 per cent, in childcare subvention rates provided under the CCS and TEC Schemes for children aged from 6 months up to 15 years old.

More than 70,000 families will benefit from reduced childcare costs from September as a result of these enhancements to these Schemes.