Tom Neville (Limerick County, Fine Gael)
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523. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the estimated annual cost of providing an additional two hours of free preschool education through the early childhood care and education scheme; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [4233/19]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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€298.1m has been allocated to the Early Childhood Care and Education scheme in 2019. Currently, children registered on ECCE receive 15 hours of free pre-school education per week.

Should the 15 hour entitlement be increased by 2 hours per week to a total of 17 hours per week, this would result in an estimated additional cost of €39.7m in 2019. Should the 15 hour entitlement be increased by an additional two hours per day, up to a total of 25 hours per week, the additional cost would be €198.7m in 2019.

It should also be noted that the hours of subsidy under the Affordable Childcare Scheme, which will be introduced in late 2019, are intended to wrap around a child's participation in ECCE. Therefore, any increase to the maximum number of eligible hours under ECCE would lead to an associated reduction in the cost of the Affordable Childcare Scheme. However, the impact of this effect has not been fully quantified and has therefore not been taken into account in the costing figures provided within this reply.