977. Deputy Sean Sherlock asked the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the number of providers that have been paid AIM funding for 2024; and the number awaiting payment, by county, in tabular form. [45113/24]

The Access and Inclusion Model (AIM) is a model of supports designed to ensure that children with disabilities can access the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Programme. Its goal is to empower pre-school providers to deliver an inclusive pre-school experience, ensuring that every eligible child can meaningfully participate in the ECCE Programme and reap the benefits of high quality early learning and care.

The main supports are grouped into universal or targeted supports. Universal supports are designed to create a more inclusive culture in Early Learning and Care settings, through training courses and qualifications for staff. Where universal supports are not enough to meet the needs of an individual child, targeted supports are available to ensure the child can meaningfully participate in pre-school.

The AIM targeted supports are AIM Level 5 and AIM Level 7. AIM Level 5 provides specialised equipment, appliances or capital grants towards minor building alterations to ensure a child’s meaningful participation in pre-school. AIM level 7 provides additional funding to pre-schools who have a child requiring extra support. Providers can use this funding either to reduce the child-to-adult ratio in the pre-school room or to fund an extra staff member as a shared resource with other children in the ECCE setting.

Below are the statistics by county for the number of providers who were approved for AIM targeted supports and have to be paid. The reasons as to why payments have not issued can vary but may include tax clearance issues, companies registration issues or invoice issues.

The data in the table below relates to calendar year 2024 (01 Jan – 31 Oct) covering both 2024/25 and 2023/24 calls.

Payments listed for Level 5 relate to Level 5 alterations only because Level 5 equipment payments are made directly to the equipment supplier.