Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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Tusla is the independent statutory regulator for early years services, including both early learning and care (ELC) and school-age (SAC) services, and is responsible for maintaining the register of services under the Child Care Act 1991. It is a legal requirement for a service proposing to operate to submit an application to Tusla under section 58D(2) of the Child Care Act 1991, at least 3 months before it intends to commence operation. Tusla provides my Department with registration data a month in arrears, to allow time for verification, and so the most recent available new registration figures are for end-October 2023.

It is important to note that the data is not disaggregated to reflect corporate acquisitions. Corporate acquisitions could include take-overs of existing services which may not be reflected in data on closures and new registrations (except in rare circumstances where a company chooses to close an existing service and open the service as a brand new service). If a service is bought through a corporate acquisition, it is not always necessary for the new registered provider to make an application for a new registration for the service. If an acquisition was intending to result in a significant number of changes to a service such as staffing, number of children, or service type, the service must submit a new registration application. If, however, the sale resulted in a change of owner with no other significant changes, the new registered provider could submit a Change in Circumstances application to Tusla and this would suffice for regulatory purposes.

With this caveat that the data for both new registrations and service closures may - to the same degree - include some corporate acquisitions, the number of new services registered this year until the end of October is 74 new ELC registrations and 200 new standalone SAC registrations.