The Government identified child care as a priority area for investment in the National Development Plan, 2000-2006. In total, £344 million comprising EU and Exchequer funding has been allocated to my Department over the course of the National Development Plan, 2000-2006 to improve child care provision and quality throughout the country.
The objectives of this funding are to increase the availability of child care places, to improve the quality of child care provision and to ensure the co-ordination of child care service provision on a local and national basis. This funding has an equal opportunities and social inclusion perspective and focuses on provision of child care to allow parents, particularly women, to avail of training, education or employment. The funding is targeted at services which offer daycare facilities and services for pre-school children and school going children out of school hours. The overall aims of the programme are to improve the quality of child care in Ireland, to maintain and increase the number of child care facilities and child care places and to ensure a co-ordinated approach to the delivery of child care services.
On 28 April 2000, I announced the availability of capital and staffing grants for community based/not-for-profit child care organisations and capital grants for small scale private child care providers catering for no more than 20 children to enable us to meet these objectives. In October 2000, I was pleased to announce that that capital grants are now available to private providers who cater for more than 20 children. Grants are also available for quality improvement projects such as local child care networks, child care training and innovative projects. Since the announcement of the availability of grants in April 2000, over £67 million in funding has been committed by my Department under the equal opportunities child care programme with over £55 million being allocated in the form of capital or staffing grants to child care services on the ground. Almost 21,700 child care places will be supported by the funding committed by my Department which includes the creation of over 9,400 new child care places.