Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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116. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth to detail all capital funding that is available for afterschool only facilities for this coming academic school year. [26416/24]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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Capital funding has been allocated to the early learning and childcare sector under the revised National Development Plan (NDP). This will enable significant investment in early learning and childcare.

In 2024 and 2025, my Department is delivering capital investment through the Building Blocks Capacity Grant. The primary focus of the Building Blocks Capacity Grant Schemes is to increase capacity in the 1-3 year old, pre-ECCE, age range for full day or part-time care.

The scheme will operate over two strands, an Expansion scheme and an Extension scheme to support existing services to increase capacity.

The Expansion scheme offers funding for internal reconfiguration projects valued at between €50,000 and €100,000 that increase capacity. This scheme is now closed and Pobal are in the process of notifying the successful applicants.

The Extension scheme will offer funding for larger scale projects to enable existing services to build new capacity on their current site or nearby. The scheme will be formally announced in the coming weeks to allow services to prepare their applications.

Participation as a partner service in Core Funding is a requirement of both strands.

Service providers which School Age Childcare only are not eligible to apply under Building Blocks unless the purpose of the grant is to expand in order to provide Early Learning and Care places to the to the 1-3-year-old (pre-ECCE) cohort. The focus of the investment is designed to ensure that capacity is expanded in the part of the sector where there is the greatest misalignment between supply and demand.