Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 30 November 2017
207. Deputy Anne Rabbitte asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the amount her Department has spent on non-contact hours, by service type in each of the years 2014 to 2016 and to date in 2017. [51366/17]
View answerThe funding provided by the Department has always been intended to be sufficient to cater for all of the costs associated with the childcare programmes funded, including administrative and "Non-contact" work, or to fund this pro-rata where the Department's contribution is a part of the total cost of care provided. As such, it is not possible to provide a breakdown of funding paid in respect of "non-contact time" prior to 2017.
Notwithstanding the preceding, to take account of the additional administrative burden on childcare providers as the result of significant changes to the childcare schemes in 2016-17, including the expansion of the ECCE scheme to include three intake points, contractual changes and the coming into force of the Childcare Regulations, I provided some €14.5m in summer 2017 to be drawn down as a "non-contact time" payment for providers, equivalent to seven days' funding.
An additional €3.5m was allocated to provide a once-off payment in December in respect of the More Affordable Childcare measures being implemented by providers of targeted schemes from September 2017, entitled the Programme Support Payment, or PSP. The objective of the “non-contact time” payment and the now-titled Programme Support Payment are one and the same.
These moneys have been made available to providers of all childcare programmes funded by my Department, including both community and private services, which account for 27% and 73% of all early years services in Ireland respectively. As to your question regarding the total amount funded to each, I can inform you that under the “non-contact time” payment of summer 2017, some €4,189,163 was paid to community services, while €9,233,777 was paid to private services. This amounts to a total value of €13,422,940 to date under the “non-contact time” payment.
As the Programme Support Payment of December 2017 has yet to be drawn down by providers of the targeted schemes, its final, total value remains to be seen.
