Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)
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649. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth if she will address concerns raised in correspondence (details supplied) regarding the lack of childcare places in County Kildare; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [5921/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Increasing access to affordable childcare is a key priority of government.

There has been an expansion in the amount of early learning and childcare places being delivered in recent years, and in particular a very substantial increase in school age childcare services and places, but challenges remain for some parents in accessing the type of provision they would like to in certain pockets of the country.

My Department has increased its capacity to monitor, analyse and forecast supply and demand, and this will be further developed through a new forward planning model utilising the expertise of statisticians 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, 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.

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.

My Department funds 30 City/County Childcare Committees (CCCs), which provide support and assist families and early learning and childcare providers. The network of 30 CCCs across the country are in a position to assist in identifying vacant places in services for children and families who need them 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 CCC for assistance.

All Core Funding Partner Services are bound by the conditions in the Agreement for the Provision of Core Funding Programme year 3 2024/2025. As per that agreement the service must give 20 working days’ notice to parents if they intend to remove a session type. The relevant clause in the agreement is as follows: “7.5.6. If a Partner Service introduces a new Service Type, discontinues an existing Service Type, or introduces a new fee for a Service Type, they must provide parents affected by this change with 20 working days of notice ahead of change in service offering”

If any parent/guardians believe that their provider has not followed the above procedure, or in the event that they would like to raise a concern regarding a potential breach in conditions, the first step is to contact their local CCC for support and guidance.

I also acknowledge that many early learning and care and school-age childcare services report staffing challenges in relation to recruitment and retention. In general, staffing pressures in the sector are caused not by insufficient supply of qualified personnel, but by high levels of staff turnover. In a very competitive labour market and with low levels of unemployment, recruitment and retention is a challenge for all employers, especially in low-paid sectors.

The Programme for Government contains a commitment to continue to implement Employment Regulation Orders to attract and retain early years educators and to remove barriers in education and training for early years educators to broaden access to the profession. It also pledges to introduce an ‘Earn and Learn’ apprenticeship model enabling childcare staff to gain qualifications and advance their careers.

Pay is one of a number of issues impacting staffing levels. There is now, through the independent Joint Labour Committee (JLC) process, a formal mechanism established by which employer and employee representatives can negotiate terms and conditions of employment including minimum pay rates for different roles in early learning and care and school-age childcare services. This is supported by a new funding stream, Core Funding, which allocates substantial additional investment to employers to assist with, among other things, pay costs. The JLC process has seen two rounds of Employment Regulation Orders (EROs) signed into law over the last two years to progressively increase wage rates in the sector with the support of additional Core Funding investment. For the 2025/26 programme year, a further €45 million has been specifically ringfenced to support employers with additional costs conditional on new EROs being agreed by the JLC.

Finally, Nurturing Skills: The Workforce Plan for Early Learning and Care and School-Age Childcare, 2022-2028, which was launched in December 2021, aims to strengthen the ongoing process of professionalisation for those working in the sector. It contains a range of commitments to raise the profile of careers in the sector and to support recruitment, retention and diversity in the workforce.