Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party)
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556. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth if he will commit to including the cuts in childcare costs announced in Budget 2023 in aspects of the ECCE given that all providers are not registered with the national childcare scheme and not all parents will benefit from the Budget 2023 announcements as it stands. [51248/22]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The Early Childhood Care and Education Programme (ECCE) is a universal free two-year pre-school programme available to all children within the eligible age range. As there is no cost to the parent for a place on this Programme, the elements of Budget 2023 dealing directly with reducing parental early learning and care costs focus on the National Childcare Scheme (NCS).

I secured additional funding of €121m for the NCS to reduce average parental co-payments for early learning and childcare. From 2 January 2023, all families accessing registered early learning and childcare will receive a minimum hourly NCS subsidy of €1.40, an increase of €0.90 per hour.

On 15 September, I launched Together for Better, the new funding model for early learning and childcare. This new funding model supports the delivery of early learning and childcare for the public good, for quality and affordability for children, parents and families.

Together for Better brings together three major programmes, the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme, including the Access and Inclusion Model (AIM), the National Childcare Scheme (NCS) and the new Core Funding scheme.

Participation in the Core Funding scheme is optional but I am delighted that, to date, 91% - well over 4,000 - providers have signed up. This is a tremendous level of uptake and will make a positive impact for parents and children using these services through investment in quality and in affordability with more funding for staff, and a commitment not to increase fees.

Core Funding Partner Services must contract to the ECCE programme and/or the NCS in the 2022/23 programme year and offer ECCE/NCS to all eligible children, where appropriate (for example, a service registered with Tusla as a Pre-school Sessional Service only is not required to offer NCS). In relation to the NCS, this requirement includes offering income assessed, universal and in particular “sponsor” NCS arrangements to all eligible children up to the age of 15.

3,279 early learning and childcare providers are currently contracted and available to offer the NCS.

I would encourage any parent who has questions relation to early learning and childcare to contact their local City/County Childcare Committee who can provide support and guidance, contact details available here: myccc.ie/where-is-my-nearest-ccc.