Shane Moynihan (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)
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406. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the efforts being undertaken to progressively reduce childcare costs, including plans to review core funding to establish a forward planning and delivery unit within her Department; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [12978/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Investment in early learning and childcare is now at unprecedented levels 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 early learning and childcare.

The minimum NCS subsidy has steadily risen from €0.50 in 2022 to €2.14 per hour in September 2024 alongside extensions to eligibility. Additionally, families using a childminder can now avail of an NCS subsidy towards their childcare costs.

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.

With public funding exceeding €1.37 billion this year, this funding is supporting the full year costs of the significant National Childcare Scheme subsidy increases for parents introduced last September. It also ensures the continued expansion of the numbers of children supported under the National Childcare Scheme, ECCE and AIM. Added to that, it ensures the continued roll-out and expansion of Core Funding and Equal Start, with new funding to support improved pay for early years educators and school-age childcare practitioners. It will also deliver an additional nutrition programme to early learning and childcare settings operating in the context of concentrated disadvantage.

This year, my Department will begin an evaluation of the NCS to examine how the Scheme currently operates, it's impact and determine potential enhancements to the Scheme.

There are also commitments in the new Programme for Government to review and increase Core Funding, ensure that providers’ fees are open, transparent and equitable and readily available to parents and to maintaining the fee cap as well as a commitment for the Supply Management Unit in my Department to 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.

This Unit is developing a forward planning model to assist in identifying where unmet need/demand and areas of low supply exist. 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 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 learning and cihldcare system, with State-led facilities adding capacity.

This Unit is also responsible for public capital investment in the sector. 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 the coming weeks.