Colm Brophy (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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380. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the estimated cost of increasing funding to AIMs by 10%; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [45857/24]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The 2025 budget allocation for the Access and Inclusion Model (AIM) is €80.861m.

This funding covers the cost of the seven levels of AIM, which encompass a range of both universal and targeted supports for pre-school settings. It funds a programme of capital grants for specialised equipment, appliances, assistive technology and/or minor alterations for pre-school settings to ensure children with a disability can participate in Early Learning and Childcare. It is also intended to facilitate either the recruitment of additional staff or to compensate services for a reduction in the adult-to-child ratio in the pre-school room, supporting the meaningful participation of all children within the pre-school room.

It provides access to therapeutic services where they are critical to enable a child to be enrolled and to meaningfully participate in their pre-school setting and access to expert early year’s educational advice and support from a team of dedicated Early Years Specialists.

It also provides for continued development of a qualified and confident workforce through the provision of ongoing training courses such as Hanen and SPEL and provision of funding for training under the Leadership for Inclusion (LINC) training programme and employment of Inclusion Co-Ordinator (INCO) position.

AIM has recently expanded beyond time spent in the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme. This allows children to access AIM support for an additional 3 hours a day during the ECCE term and 6 hours outside of the ECCE term.

To note, this costing assumes that all services are in a position to uplift provision by an additional 10% and that all families currently availing of AIM support would be in a position to avail of this additional support.

A 10% increase in funding for the overall Access and Inclusion Model would approximately cost an additional €8.086 million per annum.