Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
Link to this: Individually | In context

638. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality the number of creche groups that have pulled out of core funding in 2023, 2024 and to date in 2025, in tabular form, by county; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [35391/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context

Core Funding was introduced in September 2022.

The Scheme is designed to improve affordability for parents through the introduction of fee management and contractual requirements on providers to offer the National Childcare Scheme and/or the ECCE programme.

The Scheme aims to improve quality through better pay and conditions for the workforce by supporting agreement on Employment Regulation Orders by the Joint Labour Committee.

It also aims to improve sustainability of services.

Over 92% of services are currently signed up in year 3 of Core Funding.

Participation in Core Funding is optional, but it remains open to all registered providers subject to their agreement to the terms and conditions of the funding.

As of 17 June, 38 services have withdrawn from Core Funding since its introduction. One of which has subsequently since re-entered the Scheme.

Please see table below, the number of providers, by County, that have exited from the core funding scheme in 2023, 2024 and to date in 2025;

As per the latest data, there are 140 services who remain open and operational, who had previously contracted into Core Funding year 1 or 2, and have not contracted into Core Funding for the current programme year.

While my Department cannot mandate providers to participate in schemes, every effort has been made to carefully design Core Funding to meet the policy objectives including to achieve high levels of participation by providers.

It is a matter for providers to decide whether they wish to withdraw from the Core Funding scheme, the significant financial supports it provides to providers and the certainty it provides to parents through the associated fee freeze. However, I am confident that given the level of investment and associated supports, services should not need to take this step.

While a service provider intends to withdraw from Core Funding, they remain eligible in this programme year to provide the National Childcare Scheme, the Early Childhood Care and Education programme and the Community Childcare Subvention Plus Saver programme.

Supports are available from my Department where a service is experiencing financial difficulty or has concerns about their viability, accessed through local City/County Childcare Committees.

I encourage services to avail of these supports as an alternative to withdrawing from Core Funding and removing the benefits of this Scheme to parents.

Additionally, my Department funds 30 City/County Childcare Committees, which provide support and assist families and early learning and childcare providers. The network of 30 City/County Childcare Committees across the country can assist in identifying vacant places in services for children and families who need them and engage proactively with services to explore possibilities for expansion among services, particularly where there is unmet need.

Parents experiencing difficulty in relation to their early learning and childcare needs should contact their local City/County Childcare Committee for assistance. Parents can use the following website to find Core Funding Partner Services in their area at www.ncs.gov.ie/en/childcare-search/.

Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
Link to this: Individually | In context

639. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality the number of creches that have signed up to the core funding scheme in 2023, 2024 and to date in 2025, in tabular form, by county; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [35392/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context

Participation in Core Funding is optional but it remains open to all registered providers subject to their agreement to the terms and conditions of the funding.

According to recent data provided by Pobal, in their role as scheme administrator, a total of 4,437 services contracted (as of 23 June), to Core Funding, to date, with applications still open.

Please see table below, which gives the total number of unique service reference numbers (SRN), who activated a Core Funding Partner Service Funding Agreement for each programme year of Core Funding.

This is broken down by the calendar year in which the funding agreement was activated. All of these services will have received Core Funding payments in the relevant programme year.

Services that underwent a change of circumstance (COC), (i.e. a change of address, legal structure or owner) will have received a new service reference number after the change. Provided they re-joined Core Funding under the new reference number, these services are only included once in the count.

Contract Start & End Dates:

• Core Funding Year 2 (04-09-2023 to 01-09-2024)
• Core Funding Year 3 (02-09-2024 to 31-08-2025)

  Programme Year	Contracted & Approved Allocations 2023 (removed COCs)	Contracted & Approved Allocations 2024 (removed COCs)	Contracted & Approved Allocations 2025 (removed COCs)	Total Programme Year
  Core Funding 2023-24	4,345	74		4,419
  Core Funding 2024-25		4,387	81	4,468

Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
Link to this: Individually | In context

640. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality whether there is a plan to support families whose only accessible creches are in the 7% of creches that are not signed up to the core funding scheme; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [35393/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context

Core Funding, which was introduced in 2022, operates alongside all other early learning and childcare programmes and constitutes additional income to services on top of these programmes, and parental fees.

There is high participation rates among services, with 92% of providers participating in year 3 of the scheme.

It is a matter for providers to decide whether they wish to sign up to or withdraw from the Core Funding scheme, the significant financial supports it provides to providers and the certainty it provides to parents through the associated fee management measures. Should a provider choose not to avail or no longer participate in Core Funding, as private businesses, they are free to set their own fees.

However, Core Funding will remain open to these providers should they subsequently commit to offering services under the conditions and investment levels on offer through Core Funding.

Both the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Programme and the National Childcare Scheme (NCS) are currently available to parents regardless of whether or not the early learning and childcare service their child is attending is participating in Core Funding.

These schemes have made a significant impact on improving affordability of early learning and childcare for families.

The 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.

In addition, since September 2024 childminders have been able to register with Tusla and take part in the National Childcare Scheme, and families who use childminders are therefore also now able to benefit from National Childcare Scheme subsidies. Childminders and parents can find out more through contacting their local City / County Childcare Committee. Contact details are available at www.gov.ie/en/department-of-children-disability-and-equality/campaigns/city-and-county-childcare-committees/.

The new Programme for Government commits to review and increase Core Funding, ensure that providers’ fees are open, transparent and equitable and readily available to parents, and to maintaining the fee cap.

An evaluation of the first year of Core Funding and the development of an evaluation framework for Core Funding is currently underway. 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 Quarter 4 2025.

This project is being undertaken by Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service or IGEES policy analysts working in the Research and Evaluation Unit of my Department.

IGEES is an integrated cross-government service established in 2012 with the objective of enhancing the role of economics and value for money analysis in public policy making. It is part of the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform.

Parents can use the following website to find Core Funding Partner Services in their area at www.ncs.gov.ie/en/childcare-search/.

In line with the Programme for Government, work is also under way to develop an Action Plan to build an affordable, high-quality, accessible early learning and childcare system, informed by stakeholder consultation. This will set out future steps to reduce the cost of early learning and childcare to €200 per child per month over the lifetime of the Government.