Capital funding of €4.5m in respect of the Childcare Sector was made available in Budget 2017 and I intend to bring forward proposals for a grant funding scheme to access this funding in early 2017. I intend that this funding will be available to childcare services seeking to increase the capacity, quality and/or efficiency of their services.
Over 1,000 services received capital funding under the 2016 capital programme and one of my first decisions as Minister was to provide a €2.5M increase in the funding allocation for this programme, enabling all qualifying applications to be fully funded. The grants that were awarded this year were used to build / fit out / refurbish rooms or extensions to childcare facilities, make alterations to buildings or to buy additional play equipment (to a maximum of €5,000) to facilitate an increase in childcare places. I am pleased that this funding has been fully utilised and a significant number of new childcare places will be available to children entering the ECCE programme in January 2017 as a result.