Robert O'Donoghue (Dublin Fingal West, Labour)
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1863. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality when she will publish the findings and recommendations of the Advisory Group on Administrative and Regulatory Simplification for the Early Years Sector, which met during 2023 and 2024; to outline the actions that have been or will be taken on foot of the group’s work to reduce the administrative burden on providers; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [44468/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Work is well advanced on the Programme for Government commitment to develop an Action Plan for Administrative and Regulatory Simplification for the Early Learning and Childcare Sector, supported by a Working Group comprising representatives from the Department, Pobal and the City / County Childcare Committee and an Advisory Group comprising providers, educators/practitioners and parent representatives.

To inform this plan, Indecon Economic Consultants have completed a review of the end to end processes linked to publicly funded early learning and childcare schemes/programmes. A report of the findings of this review has been produced. Indecon has also compiled received from over 400 parents, providers, representative bodies and other key sectoral stakeholders who participated in a national consultation process.

Following recent further engagement with the Working and Advisory Groups, and these reports, the Action Plan which will outline short-term, medium-term, and long-term administrative and regulatory simplification measures will be finalised and published in Autumn 2025.

In advance of the publication of the Action Plan for Administrative and Regulatory simplification, the Department has identified a series of immediate measures that have already been delivered or are currently in train for delivery before year end 2025.

These actions, which have been developed from stakeholder input obtained over the course of regional workshops held throughout the country has allowed the Department to prioritise its Programme for Governments commitments, by aiming to deliver these actions concurrently with the development of the Action Plan.

Measures already implemented include

• Introduction of an online application process for Qualification Recognition. This online application process ensures applicants can upload their application documents with user-friendly, efficient, and accessible digital forms.
• A Simplified Core Funding application process for providers by continuing the introduction of cloning functionality to give the ability for services to clone: a) their most recently approved Core Funding Application from the 2024/2025 Core Funding Programme Year as their 2025/2026 original Core Funding Application, and; b) fee tables