Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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In September 2022, 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 as well as stability and sustainability for providers. 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.

Core Funding, which began in September 2022, is the new funding stream worth €259 million in full year costs to start this partnership for the public good between the State and providers. Its primary purpose is to improve pay and conditions in the sector as a whole and improve affordability for parents as well as ensuring a stable income to providers.

Core Funding differs from the other schemes for subsidising Early Learning and Childcare in that it follows a supply-side model. Services receive funding based on their capacity – the space and opening hours they offer to children – rather than on registrations or attendance. Structuring Core Funding primarily based on capacity means that services have an allocation each year that does not fluctuate in line with children’s attendance. Core Funding contributes to services’ sustainability and significantly increases income for the overwhelming majority of services and provides greater funding stability. This stability of funding should be especially helpful to new services starting up.

Core Funding has provided evidence of increased capacity in ELC and SAC. Initial analysis shows the increased capacity is the type of capacity that is in highest demand relative to supply (i.e. more baby and toddler places as well as school-age places).

Budget 2023 allocates €1,025m to early learning and childcare – a clear demonstration from Government of the value of the sector. Together for Better aims to transform the sector and entails greater public management of the sector, including new conditions in relation to fees controls, quality improvements, and financial and operational transparency. I am committed to working with Partner Services delivering early learning and childcare for the public good.

Also, some €69 million was allocated to the Early Learning and Childcare sector in the revised National Development Plan (NDP) allocation. This will enable significant capital investment in early learning and childcare across three pillars: (1) Building Blocks - Improvement Grant, (2) Building Blocks - Capacity Grant and (3) Building Blocks - Innovation Grant.

The design of both the Building Blocks - Capacity Grant scheme and the Innovation Scheme are currently underway. A working group has been established comprising officials of my Department, representatives of the County Childcare Committees and Pobal.

As a first step, I have asked the working group to provide me with options for the delivery of a capital funding scheme which will aim to address capacity gaps by providing funding in areas where they are most needed. Some €20m has been made available to my Department in 2024 with a further €45m available in 2025 for this purpose. To this end this working group has commenced a needs analysis of the Early Learning and Childcare sector. This analysis will look at undersupply by region and by age category and will ensure that my Department can fund additional capacity where it is most needed. I hope to provide more details of these two grant schemes in the coming months.