Liam Quaide (Cork East, Social Democrats)
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985. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth her plans to address the lack of childcare facilities in Youghal, County Cork; her plans to build and or purchase State-owned childcare facilities to address the unmet capacity needs in the local Youghal area; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [2945/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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My Department employs a range of approaches to identify and address shortages of early learning and childcare places, bearing in mind the wide range of types of early learning and childcare provision offered by services and required by families.

Last year, a Supply Management Unit within the Early Learning and Care and School Age Childcare Division was established, and 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 childcare sector where required.

The development of a forward planning model is currently underway utilising the skills of statisticians on secondment from the Central Statistics Office, those experienced in the field of early learning and childcare and the expertise of a GIS mapper working with the Department. The model will seek to identify the nature and volume of different types of early learning and childcare 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.

It is important to note that demand for early learning and childcare beyond sessional pre-school provision is highly elastic and shaped very substantially by families' individual composition, circumstances and preferences; employment patterns and income; and the price and availability of services.

My Department collects extensive data on supply through both survey and administrative data. A range of data sources show that the level of capacity in the sector has risen substantially in recent years. However, there is also evidence that demand for places is increasing and, for certain cohorts and in certain areas, outstripping supply. This is partly driven by the significant improvements in affordability that have been achieved in recent years. Published data on capacity broken down at county level is available at

The Programme for Government 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. 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.