Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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103. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the number of childcare centres, preschools and crèches that have installed HEPA filters as part of the grant programme announced in December 2021. [6765/22]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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In December 2021 as part of a new suite of measures aimed at supporting Early Learning and Care (ELC) and School Aged Childcare (SAC) services during the Omicron wave of COVID-19, I provided €10 million through a Grant Programme for Improved Ventilation and other measures to reduce transmission.

The objective of the grant programme is to support infection control in services, including by improving ventilation and air filtration through temporary structural changes and/or the use of mobile HEPA filters. This grant aims to improve natural and mechanical ventilation indoors, on a once-off and exceptional basis given the need to mitigate risks associated with COVID-19 in line with the current national public health guidance. Other eligible expenditure under this grant programme includes play equipment and waterproof clothing to support increased outdoor play and medical grade face masks.

As ELC and SAC services are free to spend the grant on a number of eligible expenditure items, there is no data available on the number of HEPA filters installed.

The grant closed for applications on the 31 January 2022. My Department received 4,109 applications for the amount of € 7,783,500 out of 4,304 eligible applicants representing over a 95% take up for the grant programme.