Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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140. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth if she will commit to a timely, thorough review of Core funding, as committed to in the Programme for Government; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [7764/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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There are commitments in the new Programme for Government to review and increase Core Funding, to ensure that providers’ fees are open, transparent, and equitable and readily available to parents, and to maintaining the fee cap.

These form part of a wider suite of ambitious commitments that seek to make further progress on making high quality early learning and childcare more affordable and accessible by this Government.

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

This funding, which increased by 11%, to €287 million, in year 2, has increased again by another 15% in year 3. The scheme is now worth €331 million.

This year the scheme has continued to support increases to capacity and accessibility for parents whilst also ensuring improved quality and sustainability of Partner Services. Some of the increased measures include:

• The Base Rates for all age groups increasing, with larger increases in funding for places offered to children under the age of three. In short, all providers currently signed up to Core Funding will receive a higher payment going forward to support their day-to-day costs.
• The flat rate for services registered on the Tusla Early Years Register as sessional-only increased from €4,075 to €5,000. This will strengthen supports to sessional-only services, who typically operate for shorter hours per week and fewer weeks per year.
• The minimum Base Rate allocation increased from €8,150 to €14,000. This is the minimum amount of funding a centre-based service will receive through their Base Rate. This ensures a minimum guaranteed income for services. This increase supports smaller services and services operating in rural areas, who may be prone to fluctuations in demand.
• The maximum Base Rate allocation has decreased from €600,000 to €500,000. Services will not receive funding through the Base Rate beyond this maximum value. Any service receiving more than this maximum value will have seen their Base Rate funding reduce to this level.

Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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141. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth if she will outline her plans to increase childcare places to meet growing demand; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [7763/25]

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

Early learning and childcare capacity is increasing. An annual sector profile demonstrates an 8% increase in enrolments between 2021/22 and 2022/23. Core Funding application data shows that between Year 1 and Year 2 of the scheme, annual place hours increased by almost 8%. The Tusla register of services demonstrates a net increase in the numbers of registered early learning and childcare services in 2024. However, it appears that demand for Early Learning and Care and School Age Childcare remains higher than available supply, particularly for younger children and in certain parts of the country.

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.

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 early learning childcare sector where required.

A forward planning model is in development which will be central to my Department's plans to achieve the policy goals set out in the Programme for Government to build an affordable, high-quality, accessible early childhood education and care system, with State-led facilities adding capacity.

Recruiting and retaining appropriately qualified staff in early learning and childcare is also a key determinant of supply; qualifications of staff and the ratio of staff to children are stipulated by regulatory requirements and therefore recruitment and retention of staff shapes the volume and nature of early learning and childcare places on offer.

Many early learning and care and school-age childcare services report difficulties in staff recruitment and retention. While Government is the primary funder of the sector as a whole, the State is not an employer of staff and neither the Department nor the Minister sets wage rates or working conditions.

Core Funding, in place since 2022, provides a new mechanism of allocating funding to the sector to support, amongst other things, improvements in pay. This has seen minimum wage rates increase incrementally in recent years although it is acknowledged that further increases are required to attract appropriately qualified staff.

My Department continues to support the ongoing development and resourcing of Core Funding which has given rise to a significant expansion of places since the scheme was first introduced. 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.

An additional €45million in investment is also being made available for the coming programme year to support pay increases for staff, subject to agreement of updated Employment Regulation Orders by the Joint Labour Committee.

The Government is also supporting the expansion of capacity 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–Early Childhood Care and Education, 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, which provide support and assist families and early learning and childcare providers. The network of 30 City/County Childcare Committees 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 City/County Childcare Committee for assistance. Contact details for County Kildare Childcare Committee may be found at www.gov.ie/en/publication/52b71-support-for-parents-city-and-county-childcare-committees.