A special fund of €6.5 million has been announced to help pre-schools expand to meet increased demand.

60,000 extra children are due to avail of free childcare places from this September under the Early Childhood Care and Education scheme and will now benefit from an average of 61 weeks free childcare, up from the previous 38 weeks.

Meanwhile, the trade union Impact had raised concerns that contracts with childcare providers were not yet in place – which could put the second year of the free scheme in doubt.

However, the Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone, is confident everything is on target for this coming September:

“I think parents can rest assured that there will be a place for their child. We’re getting ready to provide 60,000 extra children to avail of free services starting in September.

“The new contract that we are going to be offering to the preschool providers is now on our website, they can take a look at it and sign up to provide the service as soon as they’re ready to do so.”