Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats)
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252. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the estimated cost in 2017 of all community-based early intervention programmes; the cost of the ABC programmes in 2017; and the extent to which these costs have been factored into the expenditure base for 2018. [41199/17]

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 my Department. The Programme commenced in 2013 and was designed as a time-bound co-funding arrangement for the period 2013 to 2016 in conjunction with The Atlantic Philanthropies.

A key purpose of the ABC Programme is to identify the learning across the programme and transfer this learning into existing and established services. In budget 2016, my department secured additional funding to extend all of the existing ABC Programme to the end of December 2017.

The projected full year costs of the ABC Programme for the calendar year 2017 are approximately €8.6 million.

Based on past costs and projections submitted by areas to the Programme managers for 2018, the total estimated cost of extending the entire ABC Programme from January 1 to August 31 2018, is approximately €6.5 million. My Department has also taken account of full programme costs for 2017 and for previous years, in the budget estimates for 2018.

DCYA does not directly fund, or hold information on funding for, any other community based early intervention programmes outside of the ABC Programme.

My Department is working to ensure that we take full account of the learning from all the interventions across the 13 ABC sites, and the national evaluation, in order to inform the delivery of prevention and early intervention initiatives and to achieve our shared goal of improving the lives of children and families throughout Ireland.