Michael Cahill (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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2296. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality if she will allocate €10 million to establish local, publicly run early childhood, education and care services, beginning with areas and communities that are currently not served and experiencing high concentrations of disadvantage; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [41202/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Improving access to quality and affordable Early Learning and Care (ELC) and School Age Childcare (SAC) is a key priority of Government.

Specifically the Programme for Government commits to providing capital investment to build or purchase state-owned childcare facilities, to create additional capacity in areas where unmet need exists.

State ownership of facilities is a very substantial and significant development and offers the potential for much greater scope to influence the nature and volume of provision available and to ensure better alignment with estimated demand. A new Forward Planning and Development Unit in my Department has undertaken scoping work to explore options to introduce a segment of public provision. More detailed and extensive policy development and design work is ongoing in order progress to implementation stage, having regard to the wider emerging policy context as set out in the Programme for Government.

This work to deliver State-owned early learning and childcare services will be underpinned by capital investment through the revised National Development Plan which was recently announced.

The Forward Planning and Delivery Unit is also developing a forward planning model which draws on administrative data to map the child population and location of funded services, and GIS tools to model the link between children and available services. This will enable the identification of areas of need and can model the benefits associated with proposed interventions.

In September 2024, the Department commenced the rollout of Equal Start, a major model of supports to ensure children experiencing disadvantage can access and meaningfully participate in early learning and childcare. Equal Start is designed to be developed and rolled out in phases. Services with the highest level of need have been targeted in the early phases.

The Equal Start designation for settings (i.e., Tier 1, Tier 2 and universal) is objectively derived using the Equal Start Identification Model.

• The setting level disadvantage score is derived from a child level disadvantage score was calculated for all children registered within each setting. The score is specifically derived from:
• Children who live in a deprived area based on the Pobal HP Deprivation index
• Children from a Roma or Traveller ethnic background.
• Children availing of the National Childcare Scheme through a sponsor referral or a Community Childcare Subvention Plus (CCSP) registration.
• Children living in a homeless accommodation.
• Children living in an International Protection Accommodation Centre or Emergency Reception and Orientation Centre