Results 41-60 of 19,741 for speaker:Norma Foley

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Departmental Funding (10 Jun 2025)

Norma Foley: The Building Blocks Extension Grant Scheme was launched on 4th November 2024, with €25m allocated to the scheme. The closing date for applications was 30th January. A total of 78 applications were received. These applications came from a variety of locations across the country. In May, I announced the 49 applications which will be progressing to the next stage of the process,...

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Departmental Inquiries (10 Jun 2025)

Norma Foley: Improving access to quality and affordable Early Learning and Care and School Age Childcare is a key priority of Government. Early learning and childcare capacity is increasing. Data from the Annual Early Years Sector Profile 2023/24 shows that the estimated number of enrolments increased by approximately 19% from the 2021/22 programme year. Core Funding application data shows that...

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Childcare Services (10 Jun 2025)

Norma Foley: Improving access to quality and affordable Early Learning and Care and School Age Childcare is a key priority of Government. Early learning and childcare capacity is increasing. Data from the Annual Early Years Sector Profile 2023/24 shows that the estimated number of enrolments increased by approximately 19% from the 2021/22 programme year. Core Funding application data shows that between...

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Departmental Data (10 Jun 2025)

Norma Foley: The Deputy has requested the cost of a €1 reduction in average weekly costs of full-day childcare. This Department does not hold individualised fee data for parents as these are local agreements between parents and providers; instead a reduction in the average cost to parents is examined. The median weekly fee for full-day childcare in Ireland was €190 for the 23/24...

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Departmental Schemes (10 Jun 2025)

Norma Foley: The Building Blocks Extension Grant Scheme was launched on 4th November 2024. The closing date for applications was 30th January. A total of 78 applications were received. These applications came from a variety of locations across the country. 49 of these applications are progressing to the next stage of the grant process. From Sligo, there was one application received, which was...

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Departmental Schemes (10 Jun 2025)

Norma Foley: The Building Blocks Extension Grant Scheme was launched on 4th November 2024. The closing date for applications was 30th January. A total of 78 applications were received. These applications came from a variety of locations across the country. In May, I announced the 49 applications which will be progressing to the next stage of the process, with a total project value of €23.2m. ...

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Departmental Schemes (10 Jun 2025)

Norma Foley: The Building Blocks Extension Grant Scheme was launched on 4th November 2024. The closing date for applications was 30th January. A total of 78 applications were received. These applications came from a variety of locations across the country. 29 of these applications were unsuccessful or deemed ineligible as outlined below. County No. of unsuccesful...

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Departmental Schemes (10 Jun 2025)

Norma Foley: The Building Blocks Extension Grant Scheme was launched on 4th November 2024. The closing date for applications was 30th January. A total of 78 applications were received. These applications came from a variety of locations across the country. Of the 78 applications received, 11 were deemed ineligible and therefore did not progress to the appraisal stage. Of these ineligible...

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Departmental Programmes (10 Jun 2025)

Norma Foley: I propose to take Questions Nos. 1216 and 1217 together. The Programme for Government commits to reducing the cost of early learning and childcare to €200 per month per child. This will build on significant progress in affordability that has already been made through a number of existing Schemes. The Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Programme, which provides two...

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Departmental Funding (10 Jun 2025)

Norma Foley: Improving access to quality and affordable Early Learning and Care and School Age Childcare is a key priority of Government. The National Development Plan identifies access to quality early learning and childcare as a component of National Strategic Objective 10. Early learning and childcare capacity is increasing. Data from the Annual Early Years Sector Profile 2023/24 shows that the...

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Departmental Funding (10 Jun 2025)

Norma Foley: The Programme for Government sets out the ambition to work with schools to host before and after-school childcare in school buildings as well as planning the development of State-led early learning and childcare facilities in tandem with the school building programme, specifically referencing Irish medium naíonraí. Last year, the Department of Education published Procedures on...

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Childcare Services (10 Jun 2025)

Norma Foley: Improving access to quality and affordable Early Learning and Care and School Age Childcare is a key priority of Government. Early learning and childcare capacity is increasing. Data from the Annual Early Years Sector Profile 2023/24 shows that the estimated number of enrolments increased by approximately 19% from the 2021/22 programme year. Core Funding application data shows that...

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Childcare Services (10 Jun 2025)

Norma Foley: As the subject matter of the Deputy's question relates to an operational matter for Tusla, I have referred the matter to them for a direct reply.

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Departmental Schemes (10 Jun 2025)

Norma Foley: The National Childcare Scheme provides subsidies – both universal and targeted - to reduce the costs to parents for children to participate in early learning and childcare. The Childcare Support Act 2018, which provides a statutory basis for the National Childcare Scheme, specifies that only Tusla-registered providers are eligible to participate in the Scheme. The limitation of public...

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Departmental Schemes (10 Jun 2025)

Norma Foley: Significant investment is being made by my Department to address affordability of early learning and childcare through the National Childcare Scheme (NCS). The NCS has undergone a number of enhancements in recent years to further reduce the cost of early learning and childcare for families. These include the extension of the universal subsidy to all children under 15 and two increases to the...

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Departmental Programmes (10 Jun 2025)

Norma Foley: ECCE is a free two-year pre-school programme available to all children within the eligible age range. ECCE is a play-based learning programme. The programme runs from September to June each year, aligned with the primary school calendar. ECCE is not mandatory, but is very successful, with an estimated 96% of children in the eligible age range attending. The estimated number of eligible...

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Departmental Data (10 Jun 2025)

Norma Foley: Each year Pobal compiles data from Early Learning and Care (ELC) and School Age Childcare (SAC) providers as part of the Early Years Sector Profile. The most recently published fee data for the 2023/24 programme year indicates that the average (median) weekly fee per child before subsidies was €190.00 for full day early learning and care. The fee data shows that there is a large...

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Departmental Expenditure (10 Jun 2025)

Norma Foley: Improving access to quality and affordable Early Learning and Care and School Age Childcare is a key priority of Government. Early learning and childcare capacity is increasing. Data from the Annual Early Years Sector Profile 2023/24 shows that the estimated number of enrolments increased by approximately 19% from the 2021/22 programme year. Core Funding application data shows that...

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Departmental Programmes (10 Jun 2025)

Norma Foley: The Programme for Government commits to ensure that providers’ fees are open, transparent and equitable and readily available to parents. Fee management was introduced under Core Funding. Since the launch of that scheme in September 2022, Partner Services have agreed to an effective fee freeze whereby they will not increase fees above those charged on 30 September 2021. In the...

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Health Services Staff (10 Jun 2025)

Norma Foley: Pay is one of a number of issues impacting the early learning and care and school-age childcare workforce. The level of pay for early years educators and school-age childcare practitioners does not reflect the value of their work for children, families, society and the economy. However, the State is not an employer of staff and neither I, nor my Department, set pay or working conditions....