Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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649. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs her plans to reconsider the level of funding provided for the early years capital funding scheme 2017; if her attention has been drawn to concerns that the level of funding is insufficient to meet the demands of the sector; the reason private child care facilities are not eligible to access funding under strand 2 of the capital funding scheme; the reason for the short timeframe set out within the guidelines to complete the application; her views on whether it will be extremely difficult to have building works completed by the 30 November 2017 deadline; her plans to extend this deadline; her further plans to support private child care practitioners in a more comprehensive manner to ensure that sufficient child care places will be made available; if she will ensure that all future funding schemes will be open to all child care providers; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [25334/17]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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€4m in funding has been made available under three funding strands to childcare services in respect of capital projects related to pre-school age children. I understand that there has been a large volume of applications and these are currently being evaluated by Pobal, with a view to making recommendations as to which of these are suitable for funding. Once these recommendations have been received I will be in a position to consider whether the level of funding provided is sufficient.

Strand two of the funding scheme relates to community childcare services constructed under previous capital programmes, and this strand aims to provide funding for maintenance/repair, to protect the state's investment in these facilities - a consideration that does not apply to private services. I would however point out that private facilities were eligible to apply for the vast majority of funding available - €3m out of the total €4m. The timing of the announcement of this capital programme and the deadlines for application were in line with recent capital programmes operated by the Department, and the volume of applications received indicates that most services did not have significant difficulties in applying. I do acknowledge that it will be difficult to have significant building works completed by 30 November 2017 deadline - it is a requirement of capital expenditure that funds be spent in the year in which they are allocated; and I will be consulting with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to establish what flexibility can be offered to childcare services in this regard.

I will consider further capital expenditure to support both community and private childcare facilities in the context of Budget 2018. It is important to bear in mind that capital expenditure is only one strand of support available to childcare providers - the deputy will be aware that I have recently I announced a substantial increase to subsidies provided under existing childcare schemes, specifically the Community Childcare Subvention (CCS) and Training and Employment Childcare (TEC) Schemes from September 2017, in some cases by as much as 50%. This will provide significant additional funding to families but also to services. I have also taken steps to provide payment to childcare services for ‘non-contact time’ for the first time, and this will be available in summer 2017. A total of €14.5 million is available across community and private services to recognise the increasing volume of work done outside of direct contact hours with children. These are in addition to the restoration of ECCE rates to pre-crisis levels last year.