Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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Some €69 million has been allocated over the period 2023-2025 to the early learning and childcare sector under the revised National Development Plan (NDP). 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.

Under the Building Blocks - Improvement Grant, €9 million was allocated earlier this year in grants ranging from €35,000 to €75,000 for energy upgrades and retrofit projects, which supported services in need of upgrading, such as kitchen refurbishments, roof repairs and the replacement of flooring.

Last week, I was pleased to announce Pillar 2 - the Building Blocks Capacity Grant. Under the Grant, €45m will be made available over 2024 and 2025 to deliver additional early learning and childcare places. The primary focus of the Grant is to increase capacity in the 1-3 age range for full day or part-time care.

The Building Blocks Capacity Grant will be split into two strand. Under theExpansion Grant Scheme,€15m will be made available from early 2024 to providers in areas of identified undersupply. Priority will be given to delivering full-time and part-time places within the 1-3 age group. Places for children under age 1 will also be eligible for funding. Projects of between €50,000 and €100,000 will be funded to deliver additional capacity where services can renovate/upgrade existing space to cater for more children.

The Capacity Grant will be split into two strands, an Expansion Grant Scheme, and a larger-scale Extension Grant Scheme. Both schemes will operate from 2024, to fund expansion projects in areas of identified undersupply. Funding under the Expansion Grant Schemewill be made available to providers from early 2024, with the larger scale Extension Scheme to be made available later in 2024.

The Capacity Grant will be open to Core Funding partner services. The awarding of grants will be informed by the results of a detailed needs analysis, which is currently underway, and which will identify capacity gaps and areas and categories of need.

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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88. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth for an update on Government policy on increasing supply of childcare places and decreasing the cost for parents; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [55645/23]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The availability and affordability of high quality early learning and childcare is a key Government priority as demonstrated by the record levels of investment by the State, which will exceed €1.1bn in 2024.

The combination of recent enhancements to the National Childcare Scheme (NCS) and the new public management measures through Core Funding that requires services to maintain a fee freeze as well as offer the NCS to families has led to substantial reductions in the out of pocket costs to families and substantial increases in the numbers of families benefiting.

Additional funding secured in Budget 2024 will allow us to make further progress in this area.

From September 2024, any family who is not already at the maximum hourly NCS subsidy will see an increase in their subsidy from €1.40 to €2.14.

As well as this, the NCS will be opened up to families who use childminders following the extension of regulation to childminders, which is expected to happen from autumn 2024.

The regulation of childminders and the €69m Building Blocks Capital Programme under the National Development Plan are among the steps I am taking to address issues of under supply of State funded early learning and childcare places. Other steps include:

• The updating the 2001 Planning Guidelines for Local Authorities on Early Learning and Childcare Settings in partnership with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage; and
• The ongoing development of Core Funding which has given rise to a significant expansion of places since the scheme was first introduced. The allocation for year 2 of this scheme provided for a 3% growth in capacity, which has materialised, and the allocation of year 3 of the scheme provides for further growth of 3%.