Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 21 July 2016
27. Deputy Brendan Smith asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs her plans to assist in the provision of additional child care places and-or the upgrading of existing facilities for community and private providers; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [22938/16]
View answerI was delighted to announce recently that more than €6.5m in capital funding has been allocated through my Department to 1,006 pre-school providers nationwide. This represents an increase of over €2.5m on the amount of €4m announced for this programme in February 2016. This grant has been made available for early years pre-school services, both private and not-for-profit/community, that are intending to expand their service to provide for more capacity in the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme. Grants of up to €10,000 per provider are being provided. The extension of the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) pre-school scheme so that every child will be able to access free pre-school from the age of three until they start school (entering pre-school in the September, January or April after they turn three) is a welcome development for children, parents and Early Years providers. It will see more than 60,000 additional children enrolled in the programme by April 2017. Children will now benefit from an average of 61 weeks of the scheme, up from 38 weeks. In order to ensure that there is sufficient capacity in the sector to provide for these children, this is one of a number of measures my Department has developed to assist services to expand.
My Department is consulting closely with the County Childcare Committees (CCCs), the Early Years Sector representatives and the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government in order to ensure the readiness of preschools to accommodate the additional children enrolling in ECCE from this coming September.
My Department made data available to the 30 CCCs earlier this year detailing the number of children that will be eligible for ECCE in September 2016, January 2017 and April 2017 per Electoral Division. This greatly assisted CCCs and service providers to determine the capacity for business expansion.
My Department has altered ECCE’s rules to allow for higher capitation to be payable to services on a room by room basis. This would allow services with two rooms, but only one graduate, to still receive higher capitation for one of the rooms. This assists services in expanding capacity and incrementally increasing the number of graduates in their employment.
My Department has worked closely with the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government to consider planning issues for services wishing to expand their service. Earlier this year the DOECLG issued a circular to all Local Authorities asking them to assist early years providers with their planning queries and the pre-planning consultation phase in so far as possible.
