Kathleen Funchion (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein)
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364. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the number of early childhood care and education, ECCE-only childcare providers, that are providers that do not offer a service outside of ECCE provision; the amount of annual funding they received; the number of childcare providers in receipt of State funding in same; the amount of annual funding they received; the number of providers in receipt of funding that do not provide ECCE; and the amount of annual funding providers received in 2020 and 2021, respectively. [49603/21]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme is a universal two-year pre-school programme available to all children within the eligible age range. The programme is provided for three hours per day, five days per week over 38 weeks per year and runs from September to June each year, aligned with the primary school calendar.

The number of services that have only signed an ECCE funding agreement is currently 1,217.The approved budget for these services for the 2021/22 programme year is €73,838,083 with €13,926,798 paid to date.

While these services do not have contracts with my Department for the provision of other subverted early learning and childcare schemes, such as the NCS and CCSP/TEC, they may be providing additional early learning and childcare services to parents on a fee paying basis. If they are providing additional childcare services they would not ECCE only services. The Department does not collect data from providers on private childcare arrangements.

With regard to services who have entered in to contracts with the Department for subsidy schemes other than ECCE, there are currently 461 services who are registered to provide NCS and or CCSP/TEC but have not signed an ECCE 2021 funding agreement. The approved budget for these services for 2021/22 is €5,298,182 with €1,815,292 paid to date.

The amount of annual funding all ELC providers (including services that have since closed) received in 2020 and 2021 is outlined in the table below based on the programme year. The programme year generally runs from 1 September to 31 August of the following year.