Donna McGettigan (Clare, Sinn Fein)
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97. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the reason the pre-election commitment from the Government parties to introduce €200 per month childcare has been scrapped, and charges of €200 per week have been introduced instead (details supplied); and outline what happened to this commitment. [32151/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Earlier this month, I announced a maximum fee cap for services joining Core Funding that will apply to all services in Core Funding from September 2025. Under the new fee caps, the maximum fee allowed for a Core Funding Partner Service will be €295 per week for a full day place of between 40 and 50 hours per week. These fees are reduced by State subsidies under the National Childcare Scheme and the free, universal two-year Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) pre- school programme. A parent being charged the maximum allowed fee of €295 per week for a full day place of 45 hours will pay no more than €198.70 a week (the €200 per week referred to in the Deputy’s question), once the universal National Childcare Scheme subsidy of €96.30 is taken into account.

This maximum fee cap is an important step towards achieving the commitment to fees of €200 per month per child set out in the Programme for Government, which will be achieved over the lifetime of the Government.

Further steps towards achieving this commitment will be presented in an Action Plan to build an affordable, high-quality, accessible early learning and childcare system with State-led facilities adding capacity, which is a further commitment in the Programme for Government. My Department is in the planning phase for this work. However, as shown by the new maximum fee cap, I have already begun the process of reducing costs for families facing the highest fees across the country.