Childcare providers can avail of new grants to extend services to school age children – Daly

Fine Gael TD for Cork South West, and Chair of the Oireachtas Committee on Children, Jim Daly, has encouraged childcare providers to avail of new Government grants to establish new services or to expand existing services, in order to cater for children of school going age.

“The School Aged Childcare Capital Scheme 2017 is open to applications until 3pm on Friday 5th May 2017. I encourage childcare providers all across the country to consider this scheme to help them to expand their services to children of school going age.”

There are three strands to the funding available.

• A grant between €3,000 and €20,000 will be available for the establishment of a new school aged childcare service.
• A grant between €3,000 and €10,000 will be available for the expansion of existing school aged childcare services. The provision of additional school aged childcare places will be a criterion for this grant.
• The third option is a grant between €2,000 and €5,000 for the improvement of the quality of existing school aged childcare services.

“Fine Gael has consistently focused on childcare provision to help working families. We recently extended the free pre-school year for example and also introduced The Affordable Childcare Scheme, to make childcare more accessible for families, by providing universal subsidies for all children under 3 and targeted subsidies, based on net parental income, for children up to 15 years.

“Despite this progress, we know there is a need  to increase capacity for the provision of school age childcare, and that’s what this €3 million in funding aims to do, as part of the Government’s Action Plan on School Age Childcare.

“Pobal has been engaged by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs to manage the School Age Childcare Capital Programme 2017. If you are interested in applying you can find information and application guidelines at www.pobal.ie.”