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

I touched on the matter already in answering Deputy Stanton's question.

My Department is progressing a range of actions to ensure the supply of early learning and childcare provision meets demand. Work in this area is being led by a new supply management unit I established earlier this year in my Department. A key part of the supply management unit’s remit is to develop a planning function for monitoring, analysing and forecasting of the supply and demand, similar to the forward planning unit in the Department of Education. The unit will also oversee the administration of new capital investment under the national development plan, NDP, with two strands of funding rolling out this year and next under the building blocks capacity grant. As well as this, the unit is engaging with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage to progress the updating of the 2001 planning guidelines for local authorities on early learning and childcare settings.

In addition to the work of the supply management unit, other work across my Department will increase places. Core funding, which began 2022, has proven to be effective in expanding capacity. Year 2 of the scheme provided for capacity growth of 3% across the whole childcare network, which has materialised and for year 3, which will kickstart in September of this year, there is further funding to allow for a 3% growth in overall capacity. As I mentioned when speaking to Deputy Stanton, we have been engaging with the Department of Education on the guidance it gives to schools about the use of school buildings, especially, as I said earlier, for the potential for use for after-school care to provide capacity in an area where many parents want additional services.

The national action plan for childminding is designed to allow the registration of childminders and for parents using their services to benefit from the national childcare scheme, NCS. Work on that is ongoing at the moment.

The primary focus of the building blocks capacity grant scheme, which is funded under the NDP, is to enhance capacity in the one to three year-old age group where we see some of the biggest pressures right now.

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