Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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991. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the number of referrals by public health nurses for sponsorship under the national childcare scheme by month from May 2020 to May 2021, in tabular form. [31618/21]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The HSE is one of five Sponsor Bodies with an agreement with my Department to make sponsored referrals under the National Childcare Scheme. The HSE can sponsor a child under the NCS to enable participation in a childcare service where there is an identified need for childcare as an additional support to the home environment to meet child development needs for a child who is under the age of 4 years and who is not enrolled in a preschool programme funded by my Department or the Minister for Education and who would otherwise not attend a childcare service.

Table 1 provides a monthly breakdown of children referred by the HSE between 1 May 2020 and 31 May 2021. While these numbers represent completed sponsored referrals, not all progressed to a claim being made against the award. Table 2 provides the total figure.

Table 1:

Table 2:

Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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992. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the number of public health nurse referrals for sponsorship under the national childcare scheme which have been made since May 2020, by CHO area in tabular form. [31619/21]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The HSE is one of five Sponsor Bodies with an agreement with my Department to make sponsored referrals under the National Childcare Scheme. The HSE can sponsor a child under the NCS to enable participation in a childcare service where there is an identified need for childcare as an additional support to the home environment to meet child development needs for a child who is under the age of 4 years and who is not enrolled in a preschool programme funded by my Department or the Minister for Education and who would otherwise not attend a childcare service.

As clarified to the Deputy, it is not possible to provide a breakdown by CHO area as the NCS does not use this metric. Furthermore, the NCS does not collect any geographic information relating to sponsored children. Therefore the breakdown provided below relates to the county of the referring official within the Sponsor Body.

Table 1 provides a breakdown by sponsor county of children referred by the HSE between 1 May 2020 and 31 May 2021. While these numbers represent completed sponsored referrals, not all progressed to a claim being made against the award. Table 2 provides the total figure.

Table 1:

Table 2:

Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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993. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the number of non-public health nurse referrals for sponsorship under the national childcare scheme by category and month from May 2020 to May 2021, in tabular form. [31620/21]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The Sponsorship arrangement available within the NCS offers additional supports for families with complex needs. The need for a sponsored referral is a determination for the relevant Sponsor Body and one they make based on the particular need of the child in line with their defined criteria as set out in the Childcare Support Act 2018.

The Deputy has asked separate questions about HSE sponsorship, this answer will address sponsorship by the other four Sponsor Bodies.

Table 1 provides the monthly breakdown of the number of children referred for sponsorship between 1 May 2020 and 31 May 2021. While these numbers represent completed sponsored referrals, not all have progressed to a claim being made against their award.

Table 2 shows the total figures for referrals by each Sponsor Body.

Table 1:

Table 2:

It should be noted that one child may be the subject of multiple sponsored referrals over a year, as such unique counts are not added together when calculating the total figure.

Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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994. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the number of children availing of the universal subsidy and the income-assessed subsidy under the national childcare scheme by age in tabular form. [31621/21]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The National Childcare Scheme represents the first ever statutory entitlement to financial support for childcare in Ireland. To date, over 56,000 children have benefitted from subsidies under the NCS.

Table 1 supplies data on the number of children with a universal or income assessed subsidy application who have claimed against their award for the week ending 31 May 2021. To note that there are over 42,000 submittedclaims for this week but the remainder are subject to provider and/or parental verification and will be paid out on receipt of those verifications. The children’s ages were calculated as of 31 May 2021. Table 2 provides the totals for these categories.

Table 1:

Table 2:

For completeness, the numbers of children benefitting from universal and income-based subsidies under legacy schemes are included below. Again, children’s ages have been calculated as at 31 May 2021. Table 3 provides these figures, and table 4 provides the total figures.

Table 3:

Table 4:

Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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995. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the numbers of children qualified for the old CCS and CCSP schemes under band A, band AJ, band B and band D by age in each of the years 2015 to 2020, in tabular form. [31622/21]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The numbers of children qualified for the CCS and CCSP schemes under band A, band AJ, band B and band D by age in each of the years 2015 to 2020 is provided in an attached spreadsheet supplied by Pobal who are the administrators of the scheme.