Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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1965. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth to provide a timeline for the Programme for Government commitment to review and increase core funding, ensuring the fee cap is maintained and that the model is open, transparent and equitable, and that the early years educators in the private sector benefits from Employment Regulation Orders. [21195/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Core Funding, which was introduced in 2022, is designed to improve affordability for parents through the introduction of fee management.

It also supports the ability of providers to meet the additional costs resulting from the Employment Regulation Orders for Early Years Services, which came into effect in September 2022, as it provides increases in funding to early learning and childcare providers to support improvements in staff wages. A graduate premium is one of the elements of Core Funding.

Since the Scheme was introduced in 2022, its effectiveness has been subject to ongoing review and the Scheme itself has evolved year on year.

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.

Core funding increased by 11% to reach €287 million for the second year, and by a further 15% to €331 million for the current and third year of the scheme. The allocation of this additional funding in year 2 and 3 of was informed by the data from previous years, feedback from stakeholders as well as an independent financial review of sessional services by Frontier Economics.

Targeted supports for small and sessional services introduced in year 2, were enhanced in year 3.

Moreover, changes to fee management were introduced in year 3, enabling low fee services to apply for a fee increase.

The full year allocation for year 4 of Core Funding will be €350 million. A further €45 million has been ringfenced to support employers to meet the costs of further increases to the minimum rates of pay in the sector.

Combined, and contingent on the third successive Employment Regulations Orders, the Core Funding allocation will exceed €390 million. The details of this allocation, which will be published shortly, has being informed by data from previous years as well as stakeholder feedback.

IGEES Officials in the Research and Evaluation Unit of my Department are currently conducting an evaluation of the first year of Core Funding and developing an evaluation framework. This project will examine the early implementation of Core Funding and make recommendations for future evaluations of the grant. Findings from the project are expected in Q4 2025.

The lists of all approved Core Funding allocations for all Partner Services who participated in Core Funding for the programme years September 2023-August 2024 and September 2022-August 2023 are available on the Core Funding (www.gov.ie/en/department-of-children-equality-disability-integration-and-youth/campaigns/core-funding/.) page of the Department's website.

Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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1966. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth for an update on the Programme for Government commitment to undertake a broad consultation and publish a detailed action plan to build an affordable, high-quality, accessible early childhood education and case system with State-led facilities adding capacity. [21196/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The Programme for Government outlines the commitment to ‘undertake a broad consultation and publish a detailed Action Plan to build an affordable, high-quality, accessible early childhood education and care system with State-led facilities adding capacity’. It goes on to state, ‘This plan will enhance parental choice through ongoing support for public, private and community provision, as well as childminders’.

My Officials are still very much in the planning phase for this work, including determining the scope of the Action Plan, in the context of existing Plans (such as Nurturing Skills, the Workforce Plan Early Learning and Care and School-Age Childcare, the National Action Plan for Childminding and the First 5 Implementation Plan 2023-2025) and new Plans in development (such as the Action Plan for Administrative and Regulatory Simplification, the National Plan to Support Irish Language Provision in Early Learning and Care and School-Age Childcare, the First 5 Implementation Plan 2026-2028) as well as the ongoing work to review the legislative and regulatory framework for school-age childcare, to strengthen the inspection system and to reform the operating model (with a design and implementation planning phase for the establishment of dedicated state agency underway).

My Officials are also examining available research and data that will inform this Action Plan, including:

• findings from the recently published reviews of the ECCE programme and Access and Inclusion Model,
• the extant administrative data now available through my Department’s funding schemes,
• the new forward planning model in development that seeks 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,
• the wide-ranging nationally representative parent survey on early learning and childcare recently undertaken by Ipsos on behalf of my Department,
• the Annual Early Years Sector Profile Survey, which will commence shortly, and
• findings from the OECD TALIS Starting Strong Survey, which are expected later this year.

Similarly, my Officials are also examining how recent consultations with stakeholders in the sector can inform the design of the broad consultation process that is committed to in the Programme for Government, having regard to ensuring the voices of children and families, educators and practitioners, providers and other stakeholders within the sector are taken into account.

The timelines for undertaking the broad consultation and publishing the Action Plan will be determined during this planning phase. I will update the Deputy as this important work progresses.

Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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1967. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth for an update on 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. [21197/25]

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.

I am 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.

To ensure these changes work for everyone, we will undertake a broad consultation and publish a detailed Action Plan to build an affordable, high-quality, accessible early childhood education and care system. This plan will integrate our efforts to improve affordability with the necessary improvements to access, availability and quality.