Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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241. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth her plans to progress the Programme for Government commitment to progressively reduce the cost of childcare to €200 per month per child through the national childcare scheme and explore options to cap costs for larger families. [17997/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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As mentioned by the Deputy, the Programme for Government commits to reducing the cost of childcare to €200 per month per child and exploring options to cap childcare costs including costs for larger families. A number of existing Schemes would need to play a role to achieve these aims.

The Early Childhood Care and Education (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 ELC and SAC.

The NCS has undergone a number of enhancements in recent years to further improve affordability for parents. These include the extension of the universal subsidy to all children under 15 and two increases to the minimum hourly subsidy, which is now worth a minimum of €96.20 per week for 45 hours.

The fee management system introduced through the Core Funding Scheme has ensured that the investment in affordability is not absorbed by uncapped fees. A cap on fees was introduced for services joining Core Funding for the first time in the third year. It was announced in June 2024 that a fee cap will apply to all services in Core Funding from September 2025.

An evaluation of the National Childcare Scheme is due to start this year. This evaluation will review how the Scheme has performed to date and identify potential enhancements that could be made. The findings from this evaluation will inform the work of my Department in establishing a family level fee cap.

The Government of Ireland is committed to continuing to improve affordability and reach the €200 per month cap within the lifetime of the Government. However, further progress on affordability cannot be made in isolation and must be integrated with our efforts to improve access, availability and quality.

Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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242. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth her plans to progress the programme for Government commitment to ensure childcare providers’ fees are open, transparent and equitable and readily available to parents. [17998/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The new Programme for Government, which was published on 15 January 2025, commits to ensure that providers’ fees are open, transparent and equitable and readily available to parents, and to maintaining the fee cap.

Fee management under Core Funding has been an incremental and deliberate process to date. Since the launch of the scheme in September 2022, Partner Services have agreed to an effective fee freeze whereby they will not increase fees above those charged on 30 September 2021.

In the context of the substantial level of investment in the sector through Core Funding, immediate enforcement of a freeze on fees at this early stage was critical to support value for money, good corporate governance across the scheme and to meet the Department’s overarching objective of increasing affordability to parents.

Alongside the introduction of this fee freeze, the Department has taken steps to prepare the sector for the next phase of fee management.

The first step was the introduction of the Parent Statement which contained a single fee table, intended to start the process of simplification of fee options to support understanding for parents. The data fields provide start and finish times, age ranges, hours per day, days per week, this supports ease of comparison for parents and data analysis for the Department.

The second step was moving the Parent Statement and Fee Table online. There is now a Universal Fee table which is applicable to all schemes and Parent Statements automatically generated using the information provided in the universal fee table. Validations have been included for the 2024/2025 programme year to reduce the potential for user errors, and in preparation for future years and to support the implementation of a common fee structure.

The third step was the introduction of a common fee structure, controlled Fee Increases and maximum Fee Caps from September 2024.

In Partnership for the Public Good, the Expert Group supported movement towards a common fee structure for all Partner Services and the fee table contained within the Parent Statement is the key infrastructure on which this can be built. Targeted fee caps and controlled fee increases, working in association with a fee freeze, represent a further development of the fee management system under Core Funding and mark the next step toward achieving the medium- and long-term goals outlined in the Expert Group’s report.

While this fee freeze has remained in place for the majority of services for year 3 of Core Funding, the Department introduced:

• a new Fee Increase Assessment and Approval Process whereby a Partner Service meeting certain criteria could apply to increase their fees up to an approved level, and
• a cap on fees for services joining Core Funding for the first time this year

Parents/guardians and their children can only avail of the benefits and protections that Core Funding creates, such as fee management, if their service has chosen to participate in the scheme as a Partner Service and Core Funding is designed to ensure maximum participation by providers.

However, historical fees lists for programme years 22/23 and current year are available on the Childcare Search section of the NCS Website for every early learning and childcare service. The fees list tables include which schemes the service has contracted to and whether the service is a Partner service under Core Funding or not. They also include details of session costs, full or part time costs where applicable and any fee extras such as after-school clubs, deposits and any relevant discounts for multiple children dependent on the service offerings. The fees lists are downloadable to pdf format.

Parents can also contact the Parent Support Centre by phone by completing a contact form on the website to ask about year-on-year comparison of fees lists for their individual service. Local city or County Childcare Committee can also provide information and support regarding fees – the CCCs have access to all fees lists for their region.