Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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Information provided to my Department by Pobal confirms that on the week ending 12 March 2020, when childcare services closed due to Covid-19 emergency measures, there were 490 Early Learning and Care (ELC) and School Age Childcare (SAC) services with active child registrations in County Cork.

As of Friday 16 October, 483 services in County Cork have signed a funding agreement for at least one of my Department's childcare funding programmes for the 2020/21 programme year. Of these 483 services, 464 have active child registrations for the 2020/2021 programme year. ELC and SAC providers are not required to inform Pobal of the numbers of children who are attending their service but are not registered under Department funding schemes, and so they are unable to confirm how many of the 19 services which had signed a funding agreement, but have not yet registered children, intend to reopen by 1 November.