Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Deputy for raising this crucial issue. Investment in childcare has quadrupled since 2015 from €260 million to close to €1.4 billion in 2025. Last year alone, funding went up by 26%, or €261 million. Childcare costs meanwhile have dropped by more than 38% since early 2023. The last Government did a significant amount of work. I acknowledge Deputy O'Gorman is in the Chamber. He worked with all three parties and made it a priority and that yielded results. Enrolments in early learning care increased by 19% between 2021 and 2024. That is from 197,000 to approximately 234,000. There was a net gain of 226 childcare services in 2024. That is a six year low in closures. Staff numbers are up 8%. The national childcare scheme provider participation is up 136% since May 2022 with children benefiting enormously as a result. The national childcare scheme now supports approximately 220,000 children, with €530 million in funding and the early childhood care and education, ECCE, scheme offers two free pre-school years, covering 107,000 children.

I will expand on the access and inclusion model, AIM. More than 9,000 children with disabilities now have access to the ECCE scheme and broader early learning childcare services. The Equal Start programme supports children facing disadvantage through 770 priority services nationwide and core funding has increased. The two employment regulation orders introduced in 2022 and 2024 were breakthroughs as regards boosting wages, but we need to do more in that area.

For the first time, the programme for Government commits to the public model of childcare and a strong foundation was put in place over the past five years. There is an existing funding programme through the national childcare scheme and core funding on which to build the next phase of reform. Work will be needed in the Department to detail extensive policy development and design to progress to implementation stage. A lot of work is needed to map out how we do that in terms of the public building programme for early education and making sure it synergises and harmonises with the existing provision.

The 2001 planning guidelines need to be reviewed. The Department of children is engaging with the Department of housing to examine and review those planning guidelines for local authorities on early learning and childcare settings. A working group is in operation between the two Departments. That is an important piece of work that is required-----

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