The Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Dr James Reilly, today
announced the release of €16m extra funding from Budget 2016 so that the
Community Childcare Subvention (CCS) scheme, which subsidises childcare for
certain low income parents, will be made more accessible by being available
through Private Childcare Service Providers. The extension to the scheme
will apply from Monday 7th March 2016 and is expected to fund around 8,000
additional childcare places.
In July 2015, Minister Reilly published a report which found that many
parents eligible for this subvention, which can amount to as much as €95
per week per child, could not access it. This was because, until now, the
scheme could only be provided through Community Childcare / Not for Profit
services, which did not serve every area of the country. The Report
recommended that the CCS should be made available to private childcare
providers as well as community / not for profit services to improve
accessibility and options for parents and children.
The extra 8,000 places will be in addition to the funding that the Minister
provided in late 2015 which enabled community services to increase their
existing numbers of children under the CCS scheme.
The Minister said today “I am delighted to be able to extend the provision
of CCS funding to private childcare providers, allowing many previously
excluded, parents and children to access this funding. The extra resources
will make a significant difference to eligible parents on low incomes.”
The Minister made this announcement after considering data which showed
that parents eligible for the scheme could not always be catered for by
existing community services. Those eligible were not necessarily clustered
in particular areas but distributed right across the country, many in areas
where no community service existed, or, in some cases where that service
was full.
There are approximately 4,700 services delivering early childhood care and
education services in Ireland. Up to now, only 1,000 of these were able to
access the CCS scheme. It is expected that as many as 1,000 services may
apply to be part of the scheme from March.
Minister Reilly added “The extension of CCS, firstly across the community
sector and now to private childcare providers is another step in assisting
families with the expense of childcare. It will also provide additional
income for providers and assist them in providing high quality services.”
The Department of Children and Youth Affairs and Pobal have issued a call
for Private Childcare Providers to submit expressions of interest to enter
into contract to deliver CCS.