Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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655.To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the number of children availing of the universal National Childcare Scheme subsidy; and the number of children availing of the means-tested National Childcare Scheme subsidy. [25306/24]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The National Childcare Scheme (NCS) provides financial support to help families with their early learning and childcare costs. There are two types of subsidies available for children aged between 24 weeks and 15 years of age:

• A universal subsidy which is not means tested and provides €1.40 per hour for a maximum of 45 hours per week;
• An income-assessed subsidy which is means tested and will be calculated based on the family’s individual circumstances.

Of these, a total of 98,684 children have benefitted from a Universal subsidy award. A further 65,627 children have benefitted from an Income Assessed award, granted because their household income was below €60,000. It may be of interest to note that Sponsorship is available for certain vulnerable cohorts of children. Year to date, a total of 5,654 children have benefitted from a subsidy of this type.

*It should be noted that a child may avail of more than one type of subsidy in a period, in which case they may be counted under both application types (i.e. Universal & Income Assessed). However, the same child will only be counted once in the total. For this reason, the total may not match the sum of all application types.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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656.To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the total amount spent on the Universal National Childcare Scheme subsidy; and the total amount spent on the means-tested National Childcare Scheme subsidy in 2023 and the profile for 2024. [25307/24]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The National Childcare Scheme (NCS) is a national scheme that provides financial support to help families with their early learning and childcare costs. There are two types of subsidies available:

1. A universal subsidy which is not means tested and provides €1.40 per hour towards the cost of a registered childcare place for a maximum of 45 hours per week. This rate will increase to €2.14 from September.
2. An income assessed subsidy which is means tested and will be calculated based on a family’s individual circumstances. The level of subsidy is determined by the family’s reckonable income (i.e. gross income minus tax and other deductibles and minus any applicable multiple child discount). The income-related subsidy is payable for qualifying families where the family’s annual reckonable income is up to a maximum of €60,000.

The table below shows the total value of successful claims (i.e. eligible for payment) broken down by application type referring to the calendar years of 2023 and of 2024 to date.

• Successful claims are claims that became eligible for payment following submission of attendance returns by providers and parental confirmation (where applicable).
• 2024 year to date figures include claims up to week starting 27/05/2024.