Kathleen Funchion (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein)
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1921. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs her Department's estimated hourly running cost for the early childhood care and education scheme and the hourly running cost of early years care for those under three years of age in services for both cohorts of children. [27385/17]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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The capitation rates paid by my Department for the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Programme are €64.50 per week for the standard capitation and €75 per week for the higher capitation. These payments provide for 15 hours per week of early childhood care and education. The hourly running costs for the Programme are therefore €4.30 per hour at standard rate and €5 per hour at higher rate.

The hourly running costs of early years services were estimated as part of the preparation of the 2016 policy paper on the Affordable Childcare Scheme. These estimates were prepared on the basis of the data available at that time. It was estimated that the average hourly running cost was €4.67 per child per hour. Given the variation in required adult-child ratios by the age of the child, this figure translated into estimated hourly running costs of €4.76 per hour for 2 year olds, €5.37 per hour for 1 year olds, and €7.81 per hour for children less than 1 year old. Running costs for children over 3 years old were estimated to be lower.

The policy paper noted that these hourly running costs differ from the implicit hourly cost of the ECCE Programme as the ECCE capitation rates reflect the different adult-child ratio (1:11) permitted for sessional pre-school services as well as the incentivisation of graduate employment within the ECCE Programme.

My Department will shortly be commissioning an independent review of the cost of delivering quality childcare, which will provide up-to-date and more comprehensive information in relation to the costs of delivering early years care and education.

Kathleen Funchion (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein)
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1922. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the estimated cost of the early childhood care and education scheme over a 48 week period at a higher amount of €12 for both higher and lower capitation rates. [27386/17]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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The total cost for a calendar year for increasing both the lower and higher capitation rates for ECCE would be €427m which is an increase of €150m. It should be noted that this question only addresses the financial aspect of such increases. Any changes would also require revision of the rules around eligibility and enrolment dates and would also need to look at issues of capacity with regard to physical space, staffing capacities and other associated matters.

It should be noted that the actual cost of this proposal would be subject to a number of factors including actual levels of participation, and the number of children subvented at the 'higher capitation' rate- costs increase as the number of higher qualified staff increase.

Kathleen Funchion (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein)
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1923. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the estimated cost of introducing a capitation rate of €12 to early years services for all babies under three years of age over a 48 week period. [27387/17]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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I am pleased to be able to inform the Deputy that an extension to the existing CCS scheme being introduced in September this year will see a payment of up to €20.00 per week per child being introduced over a 52 week period. It is anticipated that some 33,000 children may benefit from this new measure.

In the event of full uptake of this new measure the annual cost will be €34.32m. The equivalent cost of the measure as set out by the Deputy would be €19.01m per annum