Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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1127. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the number of new places on the community child care subvention scheme which have been taken up by private providers in addition to community providers since the announcement of the expansion to the scheme in budget 2017, by category. [33974/17]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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The Community Childcare Subvention Scheme is divided into two separate grant provision arrangements: the Community Childcare Scheme and Community Childcare Scheme Plus. Both community and private providers can sign up for the latter whereas only community providers can sign up for the former. The forerunner of the Community Childcare Scheme Plus was the Community Childcare Scheme private which was introduced from March 2016 to bring private providers into the Community Childcare Scheme. It is this expansion in 2016, I presume the Deputy is referring to. The last grant agreements ran from Sept 16 to Aug 17.

In total, 914 community providers signed the grant agreement for the Community Childcare Scheme for the 16/17 and 1,320 signed for the Community Childcare Scheme Plus programme. Of the 1,320 providers, 494 are community and 826 are private.