I propose to take Questions Nos. 578, 581 and 593 together.
Dublin City Childcare Committee is one of the 33 city-county child care committees, CCCs, established as part of the quality sub-measure of the equal opportunities child care programme in order to promote better co-ordination and enhanced quality for the child care sector. As with all the CCCs, Dublin City Childcare Committee was tasked to develop a five year, locally focused child care strategy and was advised that it could expect an annual funding budget of between €292,000 and €318,500 to meet the costs of delivering the strategy through a pre-agreed series of annual action plans. Unlike the other CCCs, the Dublin City Childcare Committee opted to put in place a devolved administrative structure with five separate centres and sought additional funds under the EOCP for this purpose. It contracted out one such administrative structure in respect of which initial and additional funding of €125,000 was provided to cover a 15 month period. A further grant of €100,000 was provided for the same purpose in 2005. At the same time, the level of core funding provided to the Dublin City Childcare Committee to deliver its 2005 action plan was increased to €344,000 making a total of €444,000 available to the Dublin City Childcare Committee for its core activities in 2005 — an increase of some 39% above its earlier upper indicative budget. In addition to this core funding Dublin City Childcare Committee has also received considerable funding to enable it to offer a programme of supports for the development of child minders.
I understand three local child care resource centres have already been established by the Dublin Committee in Dublin North-Central, Dublin North-West and Dublin South-Central and that the committee would wish to establish two more and are seeking an increase in its funding. This request is still under active consideration in my Department.
Pending the conclusion of this review, it would be premature of me to comment further on the matter at this time.