Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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My Department funds private early learning and care service providers to provide the ECCE programme at a standard rate of €69 per week per child attending the ECCE programme. With the addition of the Core Funding Scheme in 2022, services providing ECCE who are also signed up to Core Funding receive a minimum of €79.20 per child per week in capitation. This figure can rise to a maximum of €95.85 with additional funding for graduate lead educators and graduate managers for sessional services. Core Funding is tailored to the individual service and is specifically designed to contribute to its operating costs and sustainability of the service making it a more flexible platform for investment towards the operating costs of services.

Core Funding in Year 1 – with an overall allocation of €259 million contributed to services’ sustainability and significantly increased income for the overwhelming majority of services while providing greater funding stability. For the small number of services, approximately 60 of the over 4,000 signed up, who saw no increase in their income through Core Funding, a funding guarantee applied. For Year 2 of Core Funding, the budget has increased by 11% to reach €287m, providing a sustainable platform for investment with increases for all services. This increase in funding allowed for the introduction of new targeted measures from September 2023 which are aimed at improving the sustainability of smaller and sessional services. These include a flat rate allocation of €4,075 for all sessional-only services, and a minimum base rate allocation of €8,150, which will benefit small, part time and school-age services.

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. This case management process through the CCCs is the route to access additional sustainability funding if required.

Finally, I would note that I have appointed Stranmillis University College, Belfast to undertake an independent review of the ECCE programme. The review will assess whether the ECCE Programme is meeting its core objectives and will identify any changes or improvements that can be made to the Programme, based on international evidence and experience to date. The final report of the review is nearly complete, once it has been finalised I will consider the review in it’s entirety and consider any policy changes that may need to be made to the programme.