Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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Every effort has been made to carefully design Core Funding to achieve high levels of participation by providers.

95% of providers participated in year 1 of the scheme and to date, 94% or over 4,300 providers have signed up for Core Funding Year 2, with applications still open. 98% of all not for profit services and 93% of all for profit services have signed up.

There are more providers in absolute terms participating in the Scheme this year and numbers continue to grow.

In Year 1 of Core Funding, 1 service withdrew from the Scheme.

According to recent data provided by Pobal, in their role as scheme administrator, 15 services have withdrawn from Core Funding since Year 1, with 12 of these services withdrawing before the start of the second programme year in September and three withdrawing during the programme year to date.

In year 1 of the Scheme, some €259 million was allocated. Core Funding increased by 11% to reach €287 million for year 2 of the Scheme. That allocation will increase again in September, by 15% for the third year of the scheme – to €331 million providing a platform increased investment in all services.

Supports are available from my Department where a service is experiencing financial difficulty or has concerns about their viability, accessed through local City or County Childcare Committees (CCC).

I encourage services to avail of these supports as an alternative to withdrawing from Core Funding and removing the benefits of this Scheme to parents.