Joanna Byrne (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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246. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth further to Parliamentary Questions Nos. 902 and 903 of 5 February 2025, the plans in place to address the loss of ELC and SAC places in County Louth; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [4907/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Increasing access to affordable early learning and childcare is a key priority of Government.

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 sector where required.

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, an early learning and childcare expert from a County Childcare Committee and 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 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.

I am committed to continuing to improve accessibility and achieve these policy goals within the lifetime of the Government. Further progress on accessibility must be integrated with our efforts to improve availability, affordability, and quality.

One way in which Government is supporting the expansion of capacity is through capital funding. The Building Blocks Extension Grant Scheme was launched on the 4th of November 2024. Applications for this scheme have now closed and an appraisal process has begun. The primary focus of the Extension Grant Scheme is to increase capacity in the 1–3-year-old, pre-ECCE age range for full day care. Appraisal of applications for this 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.

€25m will be made available this year to deliver additional capacity under the Scheme and I expect to announce the outcome of the application process in March.

Along with these measures, Core Funding, which is in its third programme year, funds services based on the number of places available, whether or not they are filled.

This provides stability to services, and reduces the risk associated with opening a new service or expanding an already existing service. For the current programme year, the allocation for Core Funding would be able to capture almost a 6% increase in capacity. Additional funding was secured in Budget 2025 to facilitate a further 3.5% increase from September 2025, in the fourth programme year.

My Department funds 30 City/County Childcare Committees (CCCs), which provide support and assist families and early learning and childcare providers with early learning, and childcare matters. The network of 30 City/County Childcare Committees across the country are in a position to match children and families to services operating with vacant places and engage proactively with services to explore possibilities for expansion among services, particularly where there is unmet need.

Parents experiencing difficulty in relation to their early learning and childcare needs should contact their local City/County Childcare Committee (CCC) for assistance. Contact details for Louth CCC can be found at .