Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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253. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the measures in place to protect parents when crèches who are registered for the national childcare scheme and the early childhood care and education scheme make payment for a five-day week mandatory, which leads to increased fees for parents who do not avail of the five days per week; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40716/24]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The National Childcare Scheme (NCS) is designed to substantially reduce costs to families using eligible early learning and childcare. It is designed to be flexible, recognising that early learning and childcare needs are different for each family.

The NCS is designed to fit around the needs of families. The family agrees the number of hours to be used with provider and (within overall scheme limits) these hours are registered with the scheme administrator. Those hours can be used over any number of days within the week. There are no restrictions on the attendance pattern of families or the number of days they use. The family only needs to agree with the provider the number of hours

It is however a matter for the provider to decide their service offer and their fee structure. They may choose to offer a 5 day only service. They are private businesses and they are free to run their model as they see fit within the parameters of the scheme. Decisions to charge parents on this basis are matters independent of the NCS and actions of the Department.

The NCS subsidies form part of a wider suite of funding supports and those supports should facilitate greater flexibility among providers.

In 2022, I launched Together for Better, the new funding model for early learning and childcare. This new funding model supports the delivery of early learning and childcare for the public good, for quality and affordability for children, parents and families as well as stability and sustainability for providers. Together for Better brings together the ECCE programme, the Access and Inclusion Model (AIM), the NCS, Equal Start and Core Funding.

A key principle of the funding model is that it is family orientated and that, in so far as possible, it should be cognisant of the reasonable needs and choices of parents.

Core Funding, which began in September 2022, is worth €331 million in full year costs for the third year of the scheme to build the partnership for the public good between the State and providers. Its primary purpose is to improve pay and conditions in the sector as a whole and improve affordability for parents as well as ensuring a stable income to providers. Unlike the NCS, it is not a subsidy mechanism for fees rather the payment is made on the capacity of the services (whether places are filled or not).

Core Funding allows for substantial increases in the total cost base for the sector, related both to pay and non-pay costs, without additional costs being passed on to parents. Core Funding also introduced fee management.

My Department is actively monitoring any issues reported by parents and will adjust policy as required and where the evidence compels such interventions to support accessible and high quality early learning and childcare provision.