Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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501. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the number of reports made of early years facilities in breach of the Core Funding Agreement for failing to pass on the benefit to employees; and the number of reports made of early years facilities in breach of the Core Funding Agreement for failing to comply with requirements on fees charged to parents. [41613/23]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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Core Funding is a payment to Partner Services designed to support quality, sustainability, and enhanced public management, with associated conditions in relation to fee control and cost transparency, incorporating funding for administration and to support improved pay and working conditions of staff and to support the employment of graduate staff.

The State is not the employer within the early learning and childcare sector and therefore does not set the pay and conditions for employees in early learning and childcare services. As such, the terms and conditions of Core Funding do not contain any rules on staff pay and conditions.

However, the Joint Labour Committee has established a formal mechanism by which employer and employee representatives can negotiate pay rates in this sector.

Last September, the first Employment Regulation Orders (EROs) for Early Years Services came into effect, providing minimum hourly rates of pay for different roles, including higher minimum rates for those in leadership roles and those with graduate qualifications, thus establishing a wage structure for staff.

This historic achievement is supported by Core Funding, which supports the ability of service providers to meet the additional costs resulting from the EROs, while also providing for a freeze on parental fees, and assisting services with financial sustainability. It is nevertheless entirely separate to Core Funding, and any potential breach of an Employment Regulation Order may be referred to the Workplace Relations Commission for appropriate action.

As a condition of receiving Core Funding, Partner Services must uphold their contractual obligations regarding their fees charged to parents/guardians as laid out in the Core Funding Partner Service Funding Agreement. This includes agreement 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 an unchanged Service Type. An increased charge of any kind for an existing and unchanged Service Type will be in breach of Core Funding rules. This also includes circumstances by which a change of fee policy would result in increased charges to parents, for example, a service that offered a multiple child deduction cannot remove it.

The Core Funding fee management system aims to ensure that affordability measures are passed on to parents/guardians. Where a parent/guardian identifies a case of a potential breach of Core Funding fee rules, they can contact their local CCC and seek to have this examined and a conclusion reached through the Core Funding Fee Review process. Contact details for the CCCs can be found at myccc.ie/Currently, there are four fee review cases which have found to be in breach of the fee management rules. There are a number of other cases currently being assessed, but I cannot comment on these until the cases are concluded.

Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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502. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth if he will make a statement on the practice of childcare operators who are signed up to core funding charging parents administrative costs and for purchase and use of equipment at early years facilities. [41614/23]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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Together for Better, the new funding model, is about getting the most out of the three Early Learning and Childcare programmes, ECCE including AIM, NCS and Core Funding, working together and ensuring stability and sustainability in the sector. Together for Better is already delivering substantial benefits for children, parents, staff and providers and I am very proud of the significant achievements in its first year of operation. Investment in early learning and childcare is at unprecedented levels with public funding for the first time reaching more than €1 billion in 2023 for early learning and childcare – a clear demonstration from Government of the value of the sector.

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.

• Partner Services cannot introduce or extract an extra charge for any Additional Service (such as meals) which was included in the fees on 30 September 2021.
• Any new Additional Services can be charged for, with fees set at the provider’s discretion, but they must be genuinely optional for the parent (e.g. if a service begins offering meals where it had not before, it may charge for these but must allow parents/guardians to supply a packed meal instead).
• If an additional service charge is introduced to fund a tour or outing, for example, a parent must be able to refuse this offer on the basis that they will still receive the early learning and childcare they would be entitled to if the tour or outing had not taken place.
• Additional Services cannot be added to ECCE-only Service Type, these can only offer Optional Extras as defined in the DCEDIY Childcare Funding Programmes Optional Extras Guide.