Ann Graves (Dublin Fingal East, Sinn Fein)
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752. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality to ensure that children in afterschool care receive AIMs support; and to consider granting funding to afterschool programmes that require special needs assistants for the children that would avail of SNAs in their mainstream school environment. [65196/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The Access and Inclusion Model (AIM) was introduced in 2016 to ensure that children with disabilities can fully access and participate in the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme, a universal two year pre-school programme available to all children within the eligible age range of 2 years and 8 months to 5 years and 6 months.

AIM provides a suite of universal and targeted supports across seven levels, tailored to meet the needs of children and pre-school settings. Importantly, access to AIM support does not require a formal diagnosis.

AIM does not operate a Special Needs Assistant (SNA) model. Instead, AIM Level 7 support provides additional funding to pre-schools where a child requires extra assistance. This funding enables providers to reduce the child-to-adult ratio in the pre-school room or to fund an extra staff member as a shared resource with other children in the ECCE setting. In recognition of best practice in this area, this support is designed to improve inclusion and ensure meaningful participation of all children in the room.

In line with commitments under First 5: A Whole-of-Government Strategy for Babies, Young Children and their Families, an independent evaluation of AIM has been completed. The findings are informing the extension of AIM beyond the ECCE programme and identifying potential enhancements to the model.

The first phase of this expansion commenced in September 2024, extending AIM supports for ECCE-age children for up to three additional hours per day during term time, and up to six additional hours outside of term time.

Work is now underway on a tailored model to extend AIM to children under three years of age, ensuring it meets the specific needs of this younger cohort.

Consideration will also be given, at a later stage, to extending AIM to children attending school-age childcare. It is critical that any extension of AIM supports to this age cohort is evidence-based and reflective of need.