Vol. 518 No. 6
509 Mr. Yates asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to clarify the recent announcement in relation to the allocation of finance for capital grants for the establishment of child care facilities; if this will be available to private individuals as well as community based organisations; and if consideration will be given to genuine individual applicants who have heavy capital expenditure. [13116/00]
I presume the Deputy is referring to self-employed child care providers. My Department has been allocated £250 million over the course of the national development plan to improve child care provision throughout the country. The objectives of this funding will be to increase the number of child care facilities and child care places available and to improve the quality of our child care services while seeking to ensure that existing child care services are not displaced by the introduction of new measures in the child care area.
On 28 April 2000, I announced the availability of grants nationally for child care providers including self-employed child care providers. Application forms and information on the schemes announced are available from my Department's equal opportunities child care section. The types of funding available are capital grants to establish, renovate or upgrade child care facilities for child care facilities for community based/not-for-profit groups or organisations including a community based/not-for-profit consortium of private-business interests and local community groups; capital grants to build, renovate or upgrade child care facilities for self-employed child care providers catering for not more than 20 children at any one time and staffing grants to support staffing costs for community based-not-for-profit groups or a consortium of local community groups and private-business interests.
Eligible projects must be directly related to the development and provision of child care facilities and must be sustainable. Under EU regulations, a project will be deemed ineligible if work commences before the applicant is notified of my decision on the individual application.
Each individual application will be assessed by Area Development Management Limited and an appraisal committee. The appraisal committee will then refer the application to my office for a final decision.
With regard to the level of funding available to self-employed child care providers, applicants must have secured a minimum private financial contribution of 35% of the cost of the project and the grant size will be up to a maximum of £40,000.
I believe that the measures which I have outlined above will make a real difference to the future of child care in Ireland by increasing the number of child care places and improving the quality of child care services. The funding being made available will support the establishment, maintenance and expansion of services over the coming years, particularly in disadvantaged areas.
