Jen Cummins (Dublin South Central, Social Democrats)
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1840. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the number of naionraí outside the Gaeltacht areas. [19356/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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My Department does not currently hold a directory of naíonraí or Irish-medium settings.

In 2023 my Department undertook a survey of Irish-medium early learning and care (ELC) and school-age childcare (SAC) settings including childminders to obtain a baseline of the current level of Irish-medium provision in the sector. This survey asked service providers to distinguish, based on the language used in staff interactions with children, whether their service is: wholly Irish-medium; a mixed setting where part of the setting is English-medium and part of the setting is Irish-medium; an English-medium setting with some use of Irish; or a wholly English-medium setting.

Since then, the same question has been asked of services by Pobal through the Early Years Platform (Service Profile), which is used by the large majority of ELC and SAC settings. The most recent Service Profile data available to the Department indicates that, of 4,582 ELC and SAC services outside Gaeltacht areas that answered the question, 105 services were reported to be wholly Irish-medium and 133 services were reported to be mixed settings where part of the service is Irish-medium. This data is self-reported by services.