Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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123. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the actions he will take to assist early years providers to expand their services, both in terms of capacity but also the type of service offered; what assistance he intends to provide to new services becoming established; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [19220/24]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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Ensuring high-quality early learning and childcare is affordable and accessible is a policy priority. While there is clear evidence of a significant increase capacity in recent years, the supply of early learning and childcare remains an issue. This is in a context of increased demand owing to the success of recent steps taken to address affordability.

My Department is progressing a range of actions to ensure the supply of early learning and childcare meets demand, with work in this area led by a new Supply Management Unit that I established earlier this year.

A key part of the Supply Management Unit’s remit is to develop a planning function for monitoring, analysing and forecasting of the supply and demand - akin to the Forward Planning Unit in the Department of Education. The Unit will also oversee the administration of new capital investment under the National Development Plan, with two strands of funding rolling out this year and next under the Building Blocks Capacity Grant. As well as this, the Unit is engaging with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage to progress the updating of the 2001 Planning Guidelines for Local Authorities on Early Learning and Childcare Settings.

In addition to this work of the Supply Management, other work across my Department will increase places among existing and new services.

Core Funding, which began 2022, has proven to be effective in expanding capacity. Year 2 of the scheme provided for capacity growth of 3%, which has materialised and for Year 3 of the scheme, further funding will be directed towards a further 3% increase in capacity in the sector - driven by existing services offering more places and/or longer hours to families and by new services in the sector.

In addition, under the National Action Plan for Childminding, I have committed to opening up access to the National Childcare Scheme to parents who use childminders following the extension of regulation to childminders this autumn.