Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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1084. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the number of beneficiary children at each level of subsidy of the national childcare scheme in tabular form. [3979/20]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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The National Childcare Scheme (NCS) opened to online applications on 20 November. Paper based applications are also now available. The Scheme provides the first ever statutory entitlement to financial support for childcare.

There has been a very high volume of applications so far. Over 31,500 applications, relating to over 40,900 children, have already been successfully submitted and over 37,500 awards have been made to parents. (Over 9,700 of these are universal awards and over 27,700 are income-assessed awards). Parents must bring this award to their childcare provider and once their provider has registered the details, payments will begin to flow. Over 15,000 children have benefited from their NCS award since the scheme launched.

As the Deputy will be aware all childcare facilities were closed on March 12 due to the COVID emergency.

The following table displays the numbers of children at each level of subsidy whose subsidy is linked to a transmitted payment. Subsidy rates are grouped into 50 cent intervals. For example, “2.00” refers to all subsidies greater than €2 per hour, but less than €2.50 per hour.

The Deputy may be aware that the older childcare schemes, CCS and TEC, continue to operate for thousands of children. Parents can choose to transfer from these onto NCS at any time with the support of their provider.

The ECCE scheme is also operating totally separately to the NCS.

The subsidy amounts set out below arise from the available voted expenditure in 2019/ 2020.

It should be noted that all counts contained in the table above are distinct at the Subsidy Rate and Standard/Enhanced level. Attempting to add together the component parts of a distinct count may result in a falsely inflated or otherwise miscalculated total figure. This is because some children will have multiple subsidy rates for the same award week.These figures were provided on May 8th 2020.