Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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1100. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the number of ECCE places available in each county as of September 2017 in tabular form. [45933/17]

Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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1101. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the number of children that were eligible for the ECCE scheme in September 2017 by county. [45934/17]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 1100 and 1101 together.

The information requested is not yet available for September 2017 so I have provided the same information for the previous year (2016 - 2017) as published in the Early Years Sector Profile 2016 - 2017. It is expected that the figures for September 2017 will be similar to the previous year's figures. Please see the table and for further information I refer you to the report which can be found on the Pobal website. The analysis covers 3-5 year olds which correlates with ECCE eligibility.

It should also be noted that not all parents take up their full allocation. For example some parents may choose to send their children to primary school at a younger age rather than take up a second year of ECCE.