Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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87. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality the engagement she and her officials have had in 2025 with the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage with respect to changing or improving planning rules to ensure delivery of childcare facilities in housing developments; the progress she can report on this; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [61618/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The 2001 planning guidelines for local authorities on early learning and childcare settings were issued under section 28 of the Planning and Development Act 2000. The guidelines are intended to ensure a consistent approach to the treatment of planning applications in respect to the land use planning aspects of early learning and childcare provision. The 2001 guidelines have contributed to the creation of supply in residential developments. However, the Department is aware that there are instances where the building provided has not been put to use for its intended purpose and in some instances remains vacant or is being used for another purpose.

The programme for Government commits to reviewing the 2001 childcare facilities guidelines for planning authorities to ensure early learning and childcare spaces are provided and put into use. The 2024 Planning and Development Act and the publication of the national planning framework now provide a strong basis from which to pursue this work. An early learning and childcare planning matters working group with officials from my Department, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and the Department of Education and Youth was established in 2024 and has met on a number of occasions across 2024 and 2025. Meetings have been held since summer 2025 with members of the working group with officials from different local authorities who were nominated by the City and County Managers Association planning and land use committee.

This engagement with nominated planners was effective in identifying a number of important considerations for the review and is now informing a wider engagement with local authorities on the ground. These issues include ensuring that buildings developed on foot of the guidelines meet the needs of the local population and are fit for purpose and balancing the need to ensure sufficient provision for children and families, regardless of the size or housing type of the development, with ensuring that buildings are effectively operated as intended when they were first built. In parallel, planning is under way to capture the views of other stakeholders who will have an interest in the revised guidelines.

I am also engaging directly with the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage to determine how best to support and inform the drafting of revised guidelines under the new planning and development Act. The approach more widely to ensuring appropriate levels of early learning and childcare supply is core to the work of this Department and will be further articulated in the context of the action plan to build an affordable, high-quality and accessible early learning and childcare system that Government has committed to publishing.

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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One of the most infuriating experiences parents desperate to get a childcare place for their kid have is to be told the building designated as a creche on the plans they bought their new home from actually is not going to be a creche.

They are told it has been too expensive to fit out, it is because the developer wants to rezone it as a house and sell it as such or, most infuriatingly of all, there is no demand in the area for crèche spaces.

As the Minister has said, the planning guidelines were put in place in 2001 to ensure when developers built a certain number of units, a childcare facility building was put in place but those guidelines are not fit for purpose any more. They are not providing the right number of spaces. They are also often not providing the appropriately designed buildings. When I was in the Minister's role, I put in place a process to address this to get the Department of housing to draft newer, stronger guidelines. Can the Minister give us a sense of when she expects to see those guidelines published?

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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I appreciate how infuriating it is and I could identify them myself in various areas, where these specific buildings, which were committed to be early learning and childcare facilities have either had a price placed on them that is far beyond what anybody could pay or the design of the building, on occasion, sometimes is not even appropriate. It is there in name as an early learning and childcare facility but in reality, the manner in which it has been built is not appropriate for that. Capital investment, which the Deputy referenced, may be required to fit it out. Oftentimes, the developer may choose to go for a change of use. All of these are the issues we need to knock on the head.

We have engaged on the ground and I acknowledge the engagement we had with the city and county managers. They have been helpful in this regard and this has informed our engagement on the ground with the various local authorities. It would appear some local authorities are better than others so there are opportunities to learn from best practice in one over the other.

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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I know the Department of housing has a huge amount on its plate in addressing the housing crisis but to be honest, it has always been very clear to me that updating these planning guidelines to make developers provide appropriate crèche facilities in new estates has never been a priority for the Department. In the last Government, I got plenty of excuses about why the Department had not done it yet. It had to wait for the new planning Bill - well, that is done now. It had to wait for new planning regulations - it has had a year to pass those. Resolving this issue cannot wait any longer. There are going to be tens of thousands of houses built in the coming years; there must be to address the housing crisis. If we get these guidelines improved, they can contribute to the delivery of thousands of new childcare spaces. The developers are not going to do this themselves and to be honest, the Department of housing is not going to do it itself. It is going to be up to the Minister and she may have to drag the Department of housing kicking and screaming to the table here. Can she give us a clear timeline of when we will see these new planning guidelines published, and when will we see local authorities implement them?

Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein)
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I agree with my colleague on the provision of childcare places and crèches, specifically the right type of building. I have areas in my constituency where massive private housing estates are being built and the childcare centres are not and have not been built at all. I have queried them with Cork City Council regarding one estate in Glanmire where 500 houses are being built with no parks, no playground, no community centre and no childcare centre going in there. To me, we need these guidelines delivered.

We saw during the Celtic tiger what happened when there was just building. We need to build communities, not just buildings. We need childcare facilities and we need the parks and playgrounds to go with them. The other thing is we have people driving all over cities, towns and counties to try to find childcare places for their children, when they should be parked at the local development. That is why these planning guidelines need to be delivered as soon as possible.

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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I do not disagree with the Deputies. I am conscious this is a logjam and a challenge that should not be there in the first instance. I have always been of the view that where you have housing, you need to have early learning and childcare facilities. You need to have schools. You need to have, as the Deputy said, community developed around it. There are too many stumbling blocks and it has been made far too easy for people to renege on early learning and childcare provision.

Honestly, the date and time is not within my gift and the Deputies will appreciate that. That is a matter for the Minister for housing but I have engaged with him and will continue to do so. Significant work has been undertaken by the working group, some in 2024 and throughout 2025. I have said previously we could not do the work without the engagement we have from the city and county managers and the planning and land use committee. I acknowledge an important step was when we met with individual local authorities where they were sharing their experience of applying the guidelines, what worked and what did not work. I acknowledge it works better in some places than in others. I will continue to engage with the Minister for housing on this matter as a priority.