Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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273. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the full-year cost via the national childcare scheme to reduce childcare fees to €200 per month. [31085/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The Programme for Government has committed to establishing a cap on costs at €200 per child per month to further build on significant progress in affordability that has already been made through a number of existing Schemes.

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 and outline the timeline to achieve this. Thorough and accurate modelling of this measure will be carried out as part of this action plan.

Each year Pobal compiles data from Early Learning and Care (ELC) and School Age Childcare (SAC) providers as part of the Early Years Sector Profile. This provides the Department with data on the average weekly fee per child before subsidies. However, this average fee figure does not accurately capture the variation across the ELC and SAC sector. In addition, estimated costs are based on a static system. Modelling the behavioural shift resulting from the delivery of a €200 per month cap change will require time to capture likely increases in labour market participation, changes in usage of childcare and use of formal childcare for the first time.