Barry Ward (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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960. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth regarding the gradual reduction of childcare costs as committed to in the Programme for Government, the steps she has taken to progress this policy; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [23515/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The Programme for Government commits to reducing the cost of early learning and childcare to €200 per month per child.

This will build on significant progress in affordability that has already been made through a number of existing Schemes.

The Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Programme, which provides two years of pre-school without charge, enjoys participation rates of 96%. 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 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 €96.30 per week for 45 hours.

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.

The fee management system introduced through the Core Funding Scheme has ensured that this investment in affordability is not absorbed by unnecessary fee increases and/or 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.

A detailed Action Plan to build an affordable, high-quality, accessible early learning and childcare system will be developed, informed by stakeholder consultation. This will include the steps to deliver the €200 per month cap.

Further progress on affordability will not be made in isolation and will be integrated with our efforts to improve access, availability and the quality of early learning and childcare provision.