Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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Quality assurance of early learning and care (ELC) settings currently includes inspections carried out by both the Tusla Early Years Inspectorate and the Department of Education Inspectorate, while inspection of school-age childcare (SAC) settings is undertaken by the Tusla Early Years Inspectorate.

The Tusla Early Years Inspectorate is the independent statutory regulator for the early learning and childcare sector. Tusla are committed to ensuring that children attending ELC and SAC services are safe, that they receive appropriate care and have a positive experience where they can develop and learn in a quality service.

The Department of Education Inspectorate conducts education-focused inspections of ELC services that receive funding from my Department. These inspections evaluate the quality of the nature, range and appropriateness of the early educational experiences for children participating in ELC services.

Under First 5, as recently announced, my Department is beginning a design and implementation planning process to bring together the functions carried out by Tusla’s Early Years Inspectorate and the Department of Education (DE) Inspectorate’s Early Years team into a single body that provides integrated care and education inspections.

The Tusla Early Years Inspectorate costs in 2023 were approximately €7 million. In 2024, the Tusla Early Years Inspectorate has been allocated approximately €11 million. The majority of this increase is related to the plans to extend regulation to childminders later this year, in line with the National Action Plan for Childminding 2021-2028.

It should be noted that, in addition to ELC services, the Department of Education Inspectorate carries out inspections of primary and post primary schools, as well as the education provision of other centres of education. The Department of Education Inspectorate is funded through the Department of Education and questions regarding their budget should be directed to that Department.

Pobal, more specifically Pobal Compliance, Audit and Risk (CAR), are responsible for carrying out compliance inspections on providers in the ELC and SAC sector. These inspections are separate to the quality assurance inspections and are there to ensure that beneficiary scheme monies are being used appropriately and that risks to Exchequer funding are detected and minimised. The budget from these inspections comes from the budget allocated to Pobal.

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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Early learning and childcare providers are required to submit a ‘Weekly Return’ under the National Childcare Scheme (NCS) in order to be included in that week’s payment run. These weekly returns can be made from the last day (Sunday) of the reporting week and must be completed no later than 23:59 on the following Tuesday on the Early Years Hive, which is the payment deadline for that week's payment run.

Providers who make a return after the Tuesday deadline, will be paid in the payment run of the subsequent week.

As such the Service Provider Portal (i.e. the Hive) does not ‘close’, rather there is an 23:59 deadline on Tuesdays for providers to submit returns to ensure inclusion in the payment run of that week.

Providers experiencing difficulty completing their weekly returns should refer to the Early Years Hive website for further information. Alternatively, the Early Years Provider Centre (EYPC) remains available to address queries related to the Scheme. The quickest way of contacting the EYPC is by submitting a Request on the Early Years Hive. Further contact details may be found here.

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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Core Funding is in operation since 15 September 2022 and has achieved very significant success in terms of the high levels of participation. With 95% participation of eligible services in year 1 and to date, 94% or over 4,300 providers have signed up for Core Funding Year 2, with applications still open. There are officially more services contracted for Core Funding year 2 than there were at the peak of Core Funding year 1.

According to data provided by Pobal, the scheme administrator, the number of providers that stopped receiving Core Funding in 2023 is 43. This is due to a variety of reasons, such as; service closed, application incomplete and/or change of circumstance.

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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Investment in early learning and childcare is at unprecedented levels with public funding exceeding €1.1 billion in 2024 for early learning and childcare – a clear demonstration from Government of the value of the sector.

Core Funding makes a significant additional contribution to services’ income, allowing them to better absorb increased costs including energy costs. In Year 1 of Core Funding, 99% of services saw their income increase through Core Funding with 1%, or close to 60 services, receiving top up payments to ensure their income did not decrease for the same level of provision offered.

All services will have seen further increases to their Core Funding allocations from the second year due to the increased allocations towards non-staff overheads and administrative staff/time. In addition, a number of targeted supports for small and sessional services were introduced in Year 2 of the scheme in order to improve sustainability of these services, specifically a flat rate top up of €4,075 for sessional-only services and a minimum base rate allocation of €8,150. These measures saw the average allocation under Core Funding for sessional-only service increase by 30% this year.

In a continued commitment to supporting these services, these targeted measures will continue to apply in the 2024/2025 programme year.

In addition, as announced in Budget 2024, the allocation for Year 3 of the Scheme (from September 2024-August 2025) will increase by €44m or 15%, to €331m. This will support the delivery of a range of enhancements in Year 3 of the scheme to support improved affordability and accessibility for families, improved pay and conditions for the workforce and continued improvement in sustainability for providers.

To note, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), Ireland's official measure of inflation, dropped steadily over the course of 2023 from a high of 8.5% in February 2023 to 3.9% in November 2023, which is the latest month for which data is available.

However, as a further measure, sustainability supports will continue to be available in 2024, and can be accessed through local City and County Childcare Committees (CCC). Once a service engages with their local CCC they will be able to avail of supports through the case management process.

Through this process, local CCC and Pobal work together to assess and provide support to ELC and SAC services experiencing difficulties. This support can take the form of general operational supports as well as more specialised advice and support appropriate to the individual circumstances of a service. In some instances, financial supports may be deemed appropriate in tandem with the case management process.

Financial supports, which may also be accessed through the case management process, are available to all Core Funding Partner Services, both community and private, who are experiencing financial difficulty, following a financial assessment by Pobal.

I would strongly encourage any service who would like to avail of advice or supports on a concern regarding their sustainability, to reach out to their local CCC. Contact details for their local CCC can be found at www.myccc.ie.