Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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17. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the number of childcare providers that have exited the ECCE scheme since 2022. [15716/23]

Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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How many childcare providers have exited the ECCE scheme since 2022?

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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As the Deputy knows, the ECCE programme provides free universal preschool care to children in the eligible age range. The programme is provided for three hours per day, five days per week over 38 weeks each year. The programme year runs from the end of August to the following June in line with the primary school year. Data provided by Pobal, which administrates the ECCE programme on behalf of my Department, shows that of the services offering the ECCE programme at the end of the 2021-22 programme year, 44 did not continue to do so in 2022-23. It is important to note, though, that there has been a net increase of 67 services offering the ECCE programme this programme year, as new services began offering the ECCE programme in 2022-23. The number of children expected to register on the 2022-23 ECCE programme is 109,000. That is very similar to the number of children who registered on the 2021-22 programme, which was 107,700.

Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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Notwithstanding those figures, does the Minister acknowledge that fact that more and more providers now are not able to provide services because there is a recruitment of staff issue? I am aware of one situation in my own neck of the woods in north Cork. One provider contacted me to say she simply cannot hire additional staff and that then has a knock-on effect. The effect is reduced ECCE hours as a consequence of that. We also note the fact that in Dublin's north-east inner city, there is a serious issue with regard to the lack of availability of early years education. This has been highlighted by the Young People at Risk subgroup of the north-east inner city task force. It continuously highlights the fact that there are a serious lack of preschool places in Dublin's north-east inner city. This is also it is reflective of my own neck of the woods in Cork, however. I am sure it is happening throughout the country.

Kathleen Funchion (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein)
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We will just have time for the Minister's reply.

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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I would like to have more time because there is a good bit in there. In last year's budget, we put in place €250 million in core funding. The purpose of this new money is to support services to allow them to pay their staff better and deal with a wider range of financial issues they encounter.

All services, including ECCE-only services, receive that money. I know that small sessional services have flagged concerns about how much they benefitted from core funding. We saw that even the small services received an extra €30 million but in order to further address those concerns, we have undertaken this review, looking at only those small sessional services. The information we get from that will inform the decision regarding how the extra money we got for ECCE core funding next year is directed.