Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Funding provided by my Department for early learning and care (ELC) and school-age childcare (SAC) services is the same for both Irish-medium and English-medium services. My colleague the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media provides additional supports for naíonraí in the Gaeltacht through her Department and its agencies.

With regards to funding the sector as a whole, this Government has in 2023, for the first time, allocated more than €1 billion to early learning and childcare – a clear demonstration from Government of the value of the sector. Over the past eight budgets, investment in early learning and childcare has risen from €260 million in 2015 to € 1.025 billion in 2023, reaching the First 5 investment target 5 years ahead of time. This unprecedented investment speaks to the commitment of Government in prioritising early learning and childcare services.

In September 2022, Together for Better, the new funding model for early learning and childcare was launched, bringing together the ECCE programme, including the Access and Inclusion Model (AIM), the NCS and Core Funding, with a fourth programme, the Equal Participation Model in development.

For year 1 of the new Core Funding scheme, €259m was made available. For year 2 of this scheme, €287m is being made available. The additional €28 million – equivalent to 11% increase - is being allocated as follows:

• €8.47m for a 3% growth in capacity.
• €6.11m for non-staff overheads.
• €2.2m for administrative staff time.
• €4m for graduate premiums
• €7.22m for new targeted measures aimed at improving the sustainability of sessional services.

Core Funding has achieved very significant success in terms of the high levels of participation, with 95% participation in year 1, and 90% participation to date in year 2. It also supported the agreement of Employment Regulation Orders leading to wage increases for over 70% of staff.

Fee management was introduced with the substantial investment through Core Funding. This ensures that parents’ costs do not increase and that the increased National Childcare Scheme subsidies are fully felt by parents. It followed the recommendations of the Expert Group, approved by Government, to first limit increases in fee rates. This effectively freezes services fees at those they set in September 2021 to ensure that the introduction of Fee Management to the sector is done in a sustainable and considered manner. Services that are experiencing difficulty and who would like support are encouraged to contact their City/County Childcare Committee (CCC) to access case management supports.

For Budget 2024, I want to build on the success of Together for Better, with the ECCE programme (including AIM), the NCS and Core Funding working well to achieve affordability, quality, inclusion and sustainability achieving significant benefits for services, staff, parents, children and society overall.

There is much value in supporting the provision of services in the Irish language to children at an early age. Early learning and childcare services play an important role here, in particular in promoting Irish as a living language.

My Department is working closely with the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media and the Department of Education to implement a comprehensive set of actions that were agreed as part of the 5 Year Action Plan for the Irish Language 2018-2022. These actions are designed to affirm the importance that ELC settings have in encouraging the development and revitalisation of the Irish language. The aim of these actions is to build on the existing measures, supports and partnerships in place in the area of Irish-medium early learning and childcare, and to further improve these supports and services.

Inter-Departmental coordination in relation to supports for Irish-medium provision of ELC, both inside and outside the Gaeltacht, takes place through the National Early Years Oversight Group (established as part of the 5-Year Irish Language Action Plan), which is chaired and coordinated by officials in my Department.

In line with the commitments in the 5 Year Action Plan, the development of a Comprehensive Plan to further the development of Irish language provision in the ELC and SAC sector has commenced. To support the development of a Comprehensive Plan it was necessary to survey Irish-medium ELC/SAC settings including childminders to obtain a baseline of the current level of Irish-medium provision in the sector. A survey of providers was therefore undertaken, and the opportunity was also used to survey providers on the supports, services and resources they believe would be most useful to support Irish-medium provision. A report on this survey is being finalised and will be published shortly. The report will complement other research and consultation processes planned for later this year, to support the work of an Advisory Group which is being established to oversee the drafting of the Comprehensive Plan. It will provide a baseline for the analysis of future trends in Irish-medium provision.

It is intended that the Plan will be published in 2024.