Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The quickest response is through core funding, which, per child, provides three times the amount of funding for services that have rooms for children under the age of one as opposed to, say, a room for school-aged childcare. We recognise that it is more expensive to provide a baby room or a toddler room, so core funding will provide additional support for services to open and to sustain such rooms. We are already seeing some services change their registration with Tusla and broadening their offering, and that is really important. Services are responding to the extra support that core funding has provided. In emergency situations we have the city and county childcare committees. Parents can ring them to find out if they know of services that have spare capacity. That can be a very practical help in the first instance.

As for the provision of extra capacity in the medium term, we are looking at the money we have invested from the NDP, €45 million for the provision of new places, and changes to the planning guidelines so we can better deliver new childcare facilities when new residential developments take place.

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