Child Care Services.

Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 3 March 2005

Thursday, 3 March 2005

Ceisteanna (171)

Kathleen Lynch

Ceist:

171 Ms Lynch asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform if his attention has been drawn to the fact that there is increasing uncertainty regarding the continuing funding of child care provisions in the Cork city area; if he will clarify the criteria used by his Department to determine the term, very disadvantaged, in respect to funding; when child care organisations will be issued with funding application forms for the next round of funding; if all applications received will be fully processed prior to 31 August 2005; if applications are not processed by 31 August 2005, there will be a further roll-over of funding; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [7430/05]

Freagraí scríofa

Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform (Mr. McDowell)

As the Deputy may be aware the equal opportunities childcare programme, EOCP, provides grant assistance towards the staffing costs of community-based not-for-profit child care services which have a clear focus on disadvantage. Funding under the staffing measure of the EOCP is only made available to help support the staffing costs of those projects which can demonstrate that they are providing child care in areas of significant disadvantage and that they are supporting disadvantaged parents to access employment, education or training. It was not intended that the EOCP will meet the full costs of running a service. The programme makes staffing grant assistance available for a period of years, usually three years, to enable them to move towards self-sustainability which would normally be achieved when the service is operating at capacity and with an appropriate fee structure.

In a number of services, the levels of disadvantage among parents are such that the families would be unable to pay economic fees and therefore those services are likely to require ongoing State support towards their staffing costs. My Department is currently reviewing the arrangements for the ongoing support of such services in very disadvantaged areas and plans to introduce new arrangements to support those services in cases where they will have received staffing grant assistance for three or more years, at any date prior to 31 August 2005. Information regarding the introduction of these new arrangements will be forwarded to the groups in question as soon as it is available.

The relevant groups throughout the country have been informed that their existing level of staffing grant assistance funding will be continued up to 31 August 2005, subject to the groups maintaining their forecast levels of service and meeting the targets they had previously agreed. The amounts awarded are deemed sufficient to enable the groups to maintain their approved level of service and to give them an opportunity to review their services and their fee structures.

Applications will be processed well in advance of the 31 August 2005. In the interim, it would be premature of me to comment further on future staffing grant assistance.