Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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559. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the number of child care providers who have been trained as LINC workers on the new AIMS model launched in June 2016, by county, in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [3311/18]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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The Leadership for Inclusion (LINC) Programme, which was established in 2016 , is a Level 6 Special Purpose Award designed to support inclusion of children with a disability in free pre-school provided under the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Programme.

The LINC Programme, which won the ‘Best Online Learning Experience’ from the Education Awards 2017, contains online and classroom based sessions in order to ensure a flexible and quality learning experience, enabling pre-school practitioners in full-time employment to attend this important continuing professional development (CPD) programme. 

The Access and Inclusion Model (AIM) makes provision to fund 900 pre-school practitioners to enrol in this Programme annually over the period 2016/17 -2019/20.

Details of the number of pre-school practitioners that have graduated from the LINC Programme 2016/17 is set out in the accompanying table.

In addition, there are 857 pre-school practitioners enrolled in the current LINC Programme 2017/18.