Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 30 May 2001

Vol. 537 No. 3

Written Answers. - Departmental Funding.

Alan M. Dukes

Ceist:

220 Mr. Dukes asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform if his attention has been drawn to the fact that applications for capital assistance for child care facilities are now taking five to six months to process and the consequent serious delay in the provision of child care facilities which this results in; and if he will take steps to ensure that such applications for capital assistance are dealt with more speedily, to ensure that the level of child care facilities available are expanded more rapidly. [16232/01]

Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform (Mr. O'Donoghue)

As the Deputy may be aware, in February of this year the Cabinet committee on social inclusion decided that the funding for out of school hours projects allocated to the Departments of Social, Community and Family Affairs and of Education and Science for after schools child care projects would be transferred to the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. The overall result of the transfer of funds for school age child care will be the consolidation of funding for child care under the umbrella of my Department's equal opportunities child care programme. In essence the transfer of this funding puts in place a one stop shop for child care funding and ensures that applicants, both private and community based, will be dealt with by my Department's equal opportunities child care programme.

As a result of this transfer of responsibilities a considerable number of out of school hours appli cations were transferred to my Department from the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs. These applications obviously had an immediate impact on the workload of the assessment team who are employed by Area Development Management Limited. Arrangements have been put in place by Area Development Management Limited to ensure the resumption of the normal three month processing period for applications. The total funding for child care allocated over the period of the National Development Plan to my Department is £344 million. To date I have allocated over £50 million to child care projects which will support over 14,000 child care places and the creation of almost 6,000 new child care places and lead to quality improvements in the child care service provided. There is no closing date for the programme and as soon as completed applications are received in my Department, they are immediately registered and within a few days are forwarded to Area Development Management Limited, the initial assessment-appraisal stage.

I assure the Deputy that there will be no undue delay in processing applications under my Department's equal opportunities child care programme.