To ask the First Minister and deputy First Minister to detail (i) how much of the £12 million childcare budget, as allocated in 2011, has now been spent; and (ii) what plans there are to allocate the remainder of the childcare budget, including a timeframe for the spend.

Some £4.2 million has been expended from the Executive Childcare Fund. A full break down of spending to date is shown below.

The £12 million Executive Childcare Fund was established in 2011. In the financial years 2011/12 and 2012/13, when there was no Childcare Strategy, Departments bid for a share of this funding by submitting proposals for childcare projects that were additional to the actions they were already supporting from their own baselines. With the launch the first phase of the Childcare Strategy in 2013, the Childcare Strategy Programme Board agreed that the Fund should be used strategically to resource the Key First Actions. The balance of the Fund will be used to resource the Key First Actions of the Childcare Strategy, primarily our commitments to projects funded under the existing School Age Childcare Grant Scheme. We have indicatively profiled these at £3 million up to 2018/19.