Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein)
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612. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth if he will provide additional resources for early childhood education in rural parts of County Kildare; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42546/24]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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Improving access to quality and affordable early learning and childcare is a key priority of Government.

The introduction of Core Funding in 2022 brought a significant increase in investment for the sector, with €259m of funding paid directly to services in year 1 of the scheme, of which €210.8 million was entirely new funding.

This funding increased by 11% to €287 million in year 2 of the scheme. This included an allocation of €165 million for staff pay and conditions through the base rate, and a further €52.5m allocated for graduates in the sector, as well as €32m for admin staff/time.

For year 3, Core Funding increased by a further 15% to €331 million. This increase which came into effect from September facilitates increases in the allocation related to provision all age groups of children, the strengthening of targeted measures to support sessional and smaller services, and growth in overall capacity of almost 6%.

In addition to the introduction and expansion of the Core Funding scheme over the last three years, there have also been very substantial increases in investment in the National Childcare Scheme, the Early Childhood Care and Education programme and the Access and Inclusion Model all of which provide resourcing to services. Furthermore, this year also saw the initiation of the new Equal Start element of the funding model which offers a set of universal and targeted measures to support access and participation in early learning and care and school-age childcare for children and their families who experience disadvantage.

There are wider financial supports available from my Department where a service is experiencing financial difficulty or has concerns about their viability, which can be accessed while remaining within Core Funding. These can be accessed by services through their local County Childcare Committee.

Data available to shows that the level of capacity in the sector has risen substantially in recent years. Sector profile data shows an increase in enrolments nationally of 8% between 2022 and 2023 with a similar increase in enrolments in Kildare for the same period.

The Building Blocks Capital Schemes, which are operating over 2024 and 2025, are supporting services to increase capacity through two strands, the Expansion Scheme, with applications now closed, and the Extension Scheme due to open for applications later this year.

The Extension Scheme will provide €25 million in capital funding next year to deliver thousands of new affordable early learning and childcare places. It will offer funding for large scale projects to enable existing community and private services to build new capacity onto their current premises by means of physical extension. It will also allow community services to apply to purchase or construct new premises. Appraisal of applications under the Building Blocks Scheme will consider the supply and demand in the area around the proposed projects and seeks to prioritise funding for areas with the biggest supply/demand mismatch.

Kildare CCC will provide supports to services from Kildare that are applying for funding under this Scheme.