Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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95. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth if he will provide an update on the progress being made to reduce the cost of childcare since budget 2023; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [25948/23]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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Affordable, accessible, high-quality and sustainable early learning and childcare is a key priority for Government. In September 2022, I launched Together for Better, the new funding model for early learning and childcare. This new funding model will support delivery of ELC and SAC for the public good, for quality and affordability for children, parents and families.

Together for Better brings together three major elements, 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.

Core Funding allows for substantial increases in the total cost base for the sector, related both to pay and non-pay costs, without additional costs being passed on to parents.

As a condition of receiving Core Funding, a Partner Service agrees not to increase the fee for any Service Type which was extant on September 30th 2021 or introduce an extra charge for any component of that Service Type. This ensures that parents’ costs do not increase and that the increased NCS subsidies are fully felt by parents. 95% of services have now signed up to Core Funding, ensuring that fee management impacts very widely. Core Funding also requires Partner Services to offer the NCS and/or ECCE to all eligible parents to ensure that parents can avail of their full entitlement to subsidised provision.

Record numbers of families are now being supported by the NCS to offset the cost of early learning and childcare. As of 8 May, a total of 118,089 children are benefitting from an NCS subsidy. This is a substantial increase – of more than 90% - when compared to this time last year when 61,302 children were in receipt of a subsidy.

Moreover, following Budget 2023, the minimum level of support under the NCS is now €1.40 per hour. For a family using 45 hours of early learning and childcare per week – this represents €3,276 off the cost of early learning and childcare per child per year.