Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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1088. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs her policy plans to allow for the number of ECCE hours that a child is eligible to receive to be contingent upon the attendance of the child at their ECCE service. [3983/20]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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The number of ECCE hours that a child is eligible to receive is contingent upon the attendance of the child at their ECCE service.

Since September 2018, all children meeting the minimum age requirement of 2 years and 8 months are eligible for two full programme years on the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme. The ECCE programme is offered for 3 hours per day, up to 5 days per week, for 38 weeks of the year.

A parent/guardian may choose to avail of, for example, only 3 days of ECCE per week, if the ECCE provider can make this service available. This would mean that their child attends for 9 hours of free early learning and care under the ECCE programme. The childcare provider would receive the ECCE subvention pro rata reduced to correspond with the 9 hours provided in this scenario.

Service Providers must keep daily attendance records for each child attending and records must include the child’s full name, date of attendance, time of child’s arrival and time of child’s departure. Where attendance differs from registration in a consistent pattern over a four week period, registrations must be updated to reflect the actual pattern of attendance. An update on the Programme Implementation Platform (Pobal's online registration system) must occur immediately after the four weeks of the reduced attendance pattern commencing.

In exceptional circumstances, for example, serious illness, the service provider may apply to retain a child's registration beyond four weeks up to a maximum of twelve weeks.