Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 18 September 2018
683. Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the reason an action (details supplied) under the Action Plan for Rural Development was not delivered by the timeline committed to; the revised timeline by quarter and year for delivery of this action; if no revised timeline has been set to date, the reason therefor; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [37112/18]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe Affordable Childcare Scheme is ambitious in its objectives: to establish a sustainable platform for investment in the childcare sector for decades to come and, through this, to support labour market activation, contribute to poverty reduction and continue to invest in giving our children the best start in life.
To meet these objectives, the scheme is also ambitious in scale and design. It involves intensive work across legislative, ICT, administrative, governance and communications areas, and I am glad to report that positive progress is being made across all of these areas.
The legislation establishing the new Affordable Childcare Scheme, the Childcare Support Act 2018, was signed by the President on Monday, 2nd July. The Act will be underpinned by detailed secondary legislation and formal policy guidelines. Work is currently ongoing on both of these and also on the development of regulations to provide, for the first time, for the registration of school-age childcare services by the Tusla Early Years Inspectorate. These latter regulations will be introduced in advance of the Affordable Childcare Scheme to allow school-age childcare services to register and thereby participate in the scheme from its inception.
Following a successful open tender procurement process, the ICT system to underpin the scheme is under development. The launch of the scheme is dependent on this ICT system. As such, now that an ICT contractor is in place, my officials are finalising a detailed project plan and I will shortly confirm and communicate a planned start date for the Affordable Childcare Scheme.
With regard to the timeline of Q4 2017 set out in the Action Plan for Rural Development, I would note that, in Q3 2017, I introduced a range of interim measures designed to fast-track many of the benefits of the Affordable Childcare Scheme. These involved an increase of up to 50% in current targeted childcare subsidy rates and a new universal subsidy for all children aged between 6 months and 3 years who are in a Tusla-registered setting. To date, these measures have seen very good take-up rates and 84,000 children have benefitted. The measures will continue to be available over 2018 and 2019.
