Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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55. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs her plans to increase the level of maximum grant aid towards the provision of new or upgraded childcare facilities; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [6995/19]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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This year I am pleased to have secured €6.106m in funding for the 2019 Early Learning and Care and School Age Childcare Capital programmes.

This funding will be delivered along three strands, as follows:

Strand A: Creation of new places for 0-3 year olds -€4.231m

This strand will offer individual grants of up to €50,000 in value to early learning and care providers for the creation of new 0-3 places where demand for these is clearly evidenced.

Strand B: Fire Safety for community early learning and care services -€0.875m

This strand will offer individual grants of up to €15,000 in value to aid community/not-for-profit early learning and care services in addressing fire safety issues that have been highlighted in inspection reports by Tusla, the HSE or Local Authorities.

Strand C: Creation of new school age places -€1m

This strand will offer individual grants of up to €20,000 in value to school age childcare providers for the creation of new school age places where demand for these is clearly evidenced.

As you are aware, the Capital programmes are necessarily a budget limited exercise. Therefore, the maximum grant size available under each of these strands has been determined in consideration of both optimising what can be delivered by each individual grant, as well as maximising the amount of providers and children that will ultimately benefit from the funding.

The maximum grants available under this year's capital programmes will not be subject to change. However, I am delighted to have secured €250m in capital funding for early learning and care under the National Development Plan (NDP, 2018-2027). This represents the kind of large scale investment in the sector by the state that has not been undertaken since the wrapping up of the National Childcare Investment Programme (NCIP) in 2010.

Research is currently on-going in my Department to determine areas of specific need that this funding will be used to address.