Vol. 557 No. 5
201 Mr. Connaughton asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform if he will give priority to an application for the construction of a purpose-built child care premises by the Tuam Community Development Resource Centre, Tuam, County Galway, under the capital grant for community based-not for profit groups; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22807/02]
As the Deputy may be aware, my Department has been given overall responsibility for the development and co-ordination of child care services over the course of the National Development Plan, 2000-2006. In this regard, the equal opportunities child care programme, established in April 2000, has been developed with the objective of significantly increasing the number of child care places and improving the quality of child care services to enable parents to avail of work, education and training opportunities. A sum of €437 million has been made available for this purpose from the Exchequer and the European Union.
While this group was approved for a staffing grant of €190,461 as a contribution towards the costs of staff working directly with children in April 2001, to date no application for capital funding under the programme has been received in the name of this group. Should an application for capital grant assistance be received, it will undergo a technical appraisal process by ADM Limited on my behalf to determine whether it complies with the programme objectives, following which a decision on funding will be made.
