Shane Moynihan (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)
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543. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality for an update on the development of a forward planning model to identify and compare areas in terms of childcare need; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [49815/25]

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

A Forward Planning and Delivery Unit has been allocated additional staff and is pursuing an ambitious programme of work to identify areas of need, forecast demand, and deliver public supply within the childcare sector where required.

A forward planning model is in development which will be central to this Department's plans to achieve the policy goals set out in the Programme for Government to build an affordable, high-quality, accessible early childhood education and care system, with State-led facilities adding capacity.

The development of the forward planning model is currently underway utilising the expertise of statisticians on secondment from the Central Statistics Office and other specialists. The model seeks to identify the nature and volume of different types of early learning and childcare places across the country and how that aligns with the numbers of children in the corresponding age cohorts at local area level. An extensive data analysis and cleaning exercise is currently being undertaken to map available publicly subsidised supply. This involves combining data from multiple administrative sources, including child population data, using GIS (Geographical Information System) mapping tools.

Overall, early learning and childcare capacity is increasing. Data from the Annual Early Years Sector Profile shows that the estimated number of enrolments has increased by 19% in the previous two years. Core Funding application data shows that between Year 1 and Year 3 of the scheme, annual place hours increased by over 15%. The Tusla register of services demonstrates a net increase in the numbers of registered early learning and childcare services in 2024. However, it appears that demand for Early Learning and Care and School Age Childcare remains higher than available supply, particularly for younger children and in certain parts of the country.

Demand for early learning and childcare beyond sessional pre-school provision is highly elastic and shaped very substantially by families' individual composition, circumstances, and preferences; employment patterns and income; and the price and availability of services.

The analysis of the Forward Planning model will provide a key input into the approach to the capital programme to be resourced through the allocation in the revised National Development Plan 2026-30.

Shane Moynihan (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)
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544. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality for an update on progress being made to reduce the administrative burden on childcare providers; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [49816/25]

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 input 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.

Shane Moynihan (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)
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545. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality if her Department is considering policies to incentivise early learning and childcare providers to operate an extended timetable to accommodate parents requiring earlier drop-off or later collection times; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [49817/25]

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

The structure of this Department's funding schemes offer a high degree of flexibility to early learning and childcare providers in structuring their service offering. In particular Core Funding, which provides funding directly to services to support operating costs, scales in line with hours of operation and age group of children catered for. Currently, through this scheme, a service provider who offers places that start earlier or end later will receive additional funding versus one who opens later or closes earlier.

However, early learning and childcare providers, whether for-profit or not-for profit, are private entities and as such, it is a matter for each provider to determine operational matters, including the opening and closing times of their service in response to local need and other considerations.

This Department, continues to support expansion of provision, both the establishment of new places and extending the hours offered by existing places through the funding and conditions of the various schemes available to services.