Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 13 May 2020
1086. Deputy Anne Rabbitte asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the amount of grant funding recouped from community childcare services in respect of children attending fewer hours of childcare than was contracted for them to attend under the community childcare subvention scheme in 2019, by county in tabular form. [3981/20]
View answer1087. Deputy Anne Rabbitte asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the number of children whose number of childcare hours under the CCS programme was reduced following an audit by her Department of the attendance of the child in tabular form. [3982/20]
View answer1091. Deputy Anne Rabbitte asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs if she has considered conducting a study into the impact of the recently introduced rule changes by which her Department can recoup funding from a community childcare service in circumstances in which an audit finds that certain users of that service did not attend all childcare hours that the service was initially contracted to provide. [3986/20]
View answerI propose to take Questions Nos. 1086, 1087 and 1091 together.
The Deputy will be aware that investment in the Early Learning and Care (ELC) and School Age Childcare (SAC) sector has increased by an unprecedented 141% over the last five budgets, with funding totalling €638m in 2020. Ensuring that this fund is appropriately accounted for, and that as many children as possible benefit from it, is one of the core responsibilities of my Department. Pobal administers the beneficiary funding element on behalf of my Department and ensures good governance and strong compliance with the rules of the schemes.
Subsidies for all ELC and SAC programmes are based on child attendance, a key governance component of the funding for which my Department is responsible. Where, during a compliance visit, Pobal discovers that the actual attendance of a child does not match that child’s registration on Pobal’s Programme Implementation Platform (PIP, Pobal's IT system), the service will be advised to make the necessary corrections to registrations to ensure that the total amount of funding received for the programme year is correct. An appropriate amount of flexibility is applied to this corrections process and Pobal works with services on a case-by-case basis in this regard.
CCS rules have been updated in recent years to clearly link funding to actual attendance during a snapshot period. This reflects the importance of safeguarding Exchequer finances and brought this scheme in line with the other schemes offered by my Department, which are also linked to child attendance.
My officials and Pobal actively monitor services’ compliance with scheme rules, potential recoupment and the impact of this activity on a service's sustainability. This includes regular reporting on compliance findings, including potential recoupments due to non-compliance. Pobal, the City and County Childcare Committees (CCCs), along with officials from my Department, support and work with services to ensure compliance with the scheme rules and to support continued sustainability of services who may be affected by compliance activity.
Based on data provided by Pobal, the total value of overclaims identified during compliance visits in 2018/19 on the CCS scheme, by county, is set out below. Please note that this relates to overclaims found through a fair and objective process, and not to recoupments.
|
County |
Overclaims identified during compliance visits (€) |
|
Carlow |
60,127 |
|
Cavan |
13,579 |
|
Clare |
92,522 |
|
Cork |
39,965 |
|
Donegal |
38,358 |
|
Dublin |
1,279,143 |
|
Galway |
180,546 |
|
Kerry |
147,623 |
|
Kildare |
19,792 |
|
Kilkenny |
138,158 |
|
Laois |
70,794 |
|
Leitrim |
15,724 |
|
Limerick |
444,402 |
|
Longford |
26,408 |
|
Louth |
49,768 |
|
Mayo |
63,371 |
|
Meath |
48,248 |
|
Monaghan |
55,195 |
|
Offaly |
12,369 |
|
Roscommon |
4,881 |
|
Sligo |
89,723 |
|
Tipperary |
54,060 |
|
Waterford |
144,063 |
|
Westmeath |
89,695 |
|
Wexford |
62,629 |
|
Wicklow |
5,467 |
|
Total |
3,246,610 |
Where a compliance visit identified that attendance during the four-week snapshot period was less than the PIP registration for that period, the provider was required to make amendments to PIP registrations, which would affect the value of their CCS contract for the year. These figures provide an estimate of the value of the changes to PIP registrations on CCS required as a result of compliance activity. Since CCS funding for the programme year was set by attendance during this snapshot period, these are annualised figures.
Where an overclaim is identified, services are required to make corrections to PIP registrations and future funding is adjusted to ensure that the overall level of funding provided across the year is correct. Funding is based on attendance during a snapshot period, and any overclaim is looked at on an annual basis. As a result, the annualised overclaim consists of two parts: the amount overpaid up to the point of the compliance visit and therefore recouped; and the potential overclaim amount that would have occurred had it not been corrected for the period after the compliance visit. The overclaims identified figures provided above are the combination of the two. Funding payments are made in instalments and corrections can be made at various times during the year.
It should be noted that, where services were required to make corrections to their CCS registrations, they had the opportunity to reregister children onto CCSP. CCSP offers the same rate of subvention as CCS did, but allows for a greater degree of flexibility for service providers and parents. It allows for the level of attendance registered on PIP to be adjusted throughout the year to reflect the ongoing pattern of attendance. The availability of this option ensured that services would not lose out in instances where children under-attended during the snapshot window but later began to attend at a higher level. It also means that a portion of the overclaims identified (as shown in the table above) is likely not to have materialised, since a child could be moved off CCS and onto CCSP, thus ending the overclaim on CCS.
Pobal have calculated that a total of 3,144 registrations required updating following a compliance visit on CCS for the 2018/19 programme cycle. As previously outlined, services are required to update registrations when the registered level on PIP differs from the actual pattern of attendance of the child. The figures supplied do not indicate a scenario where children had hours reduced; rather they count instances where CCS registrations needed updating in order to match actual attendance during the snapshot period.
It is important to note that the compliance activity should not result in any child having any service withdrawn, rather it strives to ensure that the service provider only claims from my Department for the hours the child is attending. Data available to my Department shows that the number of children accessing Government subsidies continues to increase.
While CCS has been closed, CCSP will continue to operate for the foreseeable future for any children that were registered before 15th November 2019. CCSP is now closed to new entrants families can avail of the National Childcare Scheme (NCS).
The NCS has marked another significant milestone for ELC and SAC in this country, creating an infrastructure from which Government can further increase investment in services over the next decade. The NCS enables Government to annually / incrementally build investment until it gets to target levels. The NCS enables Government to target this funding as it becomes available at particular groups, or indeed universally. The NCS is also a more user friendly system for parents and providers and the compliance regime has been designed to reflect the real-life attendance of children, the flexibility required, balanced against the continued need to protect Exchequer funding.
