Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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960. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the way in which she intends lower the cost of childcare to €200 a month over the lifetime of this Government. [2662/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Investment in early learning and childcare is now at unprecedented levels with public funding exceeding €1.37 billion in 2025, clearly demonstrating Government commitment to this area.

As well as addressing affordability this investment has served to improve accessibility, availability and the quality of provision.

The ECCE programme, which provides two years of pre-school without charge, enjoys participation rates of 96% each year. Over 70% of families on low income report that they would not be able to send their child to pre-school without this programme.

The National Childcare Scheme (NCS) complements the ECCE programme, providing subsidies – both universal and targeted - to reduce the costs to parents for children to participate in ELC and SAC.

The minimum NCS subsidy has steadily risen from €0.50 in 2022 to €2.14 in September 2024 alongside extensions to eligibility.

The fee management system introduced through the Core Funding Scheme has ensured that the investment in NCS has resulted in real change for parents with the cumulative reduction in out of pocket over this period estimated to be 50% on average.

Record numbers of children and their families are now benefiting from the NCS. Almost 220,000 unique children benefited from an NCS subsidy in 2024.

I am committed to continuing to improve affordability and reach the €200 per month within the lifetime of the Government. I look forward to further engagement and discussion to plan the way forward to deliver on this commitment.

Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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961. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the criteria that will be used to identify unmet needs in respect of providing capital investment to build or purchase State-owned childcare facilities. [2663/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Improving access to quality and affordable Early Learning and Care (ELC) and School Age Childcare (SAC) is a key priority of Government.

My Department employs a range of approaches to understand supply of and demand for ELC and SAC places, bearing in mind the wide range of types of e provision offered by services and required by families.

Last year, a Supply Management Unit was established within the ELC and SAC Division of my Department. The Programme for Government articulates an intention that the Unit be resourced and transformed into a Forward Planning and Delivery Unit to identify areas of need, forecast demand and deliver public supply within the sector where required. It also commits for the first time to provide capital investment to build or purchase state-owned ELC and SAC facilities, to create additional capacity in areas where unmet need exists.

A key part of the Supply Management Unit’s remit is to develop capacity for monitoring, analysing and forecasting of the supply and demand in this sector. The development of a forward planning model is currently underway utilising the expertise of statisticians on secondment from the Central Statistics Office and an ELC and SAC expert from a County Childcare Committee working with the Department. The model will seek to identify the nature and volume of different types of ELC and SAC places across the country, whether or not those places are occupied and how that aligns with the numbers of children in the corresponding age cohorts at local area level. This model will assist my Department in identifying where unmet need/demand and areas of low supply exist.

State ownership of ELC and SAC facilities is a very substantial and significant shift in the policy direction that the Department has pursued heretofore (i.e. privately delivered provision with increased levels of public funding and public management) and offers the potential for much greater scope to influence the nature and volume of provision available and to ensure better alignment with estimated demand.

Some early scoping work has been carried out to explore options to introduce a segment of public provision but this will require much more detailed and extensive policy development and design in order to progress to implementation stage, having regard to the wider policy emerging policy context as set out in the Programme for Government.

In addition to developing the forward planning model, the Supply Management Unit oversees the administration of capital investment under the revised NDP. Some €89 million has been allocated to my Department between 2023 and 2026.