Aindrias Moynihan (Cork North-West, Fianna Fail)
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32. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality the actions planned to ensure childcare providers participate in the core funding scheme; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [50193/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Core Funding has been designed with maximum participation of providers in mind as reflected in the year-on-year growth of investment in the Scheme (rising from €259 million in year 1 to over €390 million in year 4). This represents an increase of over 50% in Core Funding in three years.

The 2025/2026 allocation represents an increase of over €60 million (over 18%) on the previous programme year, which will facilitate:

• Support for providers in meeting the costs of increases in minimum pay rates as a result of newly negotiated Employment Regulation Orders by the independent Joint Labour Committee
• Increased funding for early learning and care capacity offered to ensure Partner Services can keep pace with rising costs without needing to increase fees charged to parents
• An increase to the minimum amount of funding a centre-based service will receive, increasing to €14,400 per year from the current level of €14,000
• A reduction in the maximum allocation for a service’s capacity to €450,000 to best spread a limited budget across the entire sector; and
• Funding to support capacity growth of 3.5% across the sector

• access to wider financial supports where a service is experiencing financial difficulty or has concerns about their viability;
• access to enhanced support for services caring for concentrated numbers of children facing disadvantage through Equal Start; and
• opportunities to apply for capital grants through my Department

Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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33. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality for an update on the measures currently being taken in her Department to reduce the costs of childcare for families; the supports for providers to ensure they can maintain both quality and sustainability; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [50207/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Earlier this year, I announced the introduction of maximum fee caps for all Partner Services in Core Funding from September 2025. The introduction of universal maximum fee caps is in addition to the fee freeze, which will remain in place for all Partner Services with fees below these caps. This is an important step towards the reduction of parental fees to €200 per month over the lifetime of this Government.

Maximum fee caps were introduced for new services last year, and this September programme year 4 sees maximum fee caps extended to existing services also. Under the new fee caps, the highest possible fees, for the most widely used full day care offering, will be no more than €295 per week for a full-day place of 40-50 hours per week. Once the National Childcare Scheme subsidy is taken into account, the maximum fee for a parent in this situation will be less than €200 per week. The maximum weekly fee is now capped at €354, for a full day care offering of over 50 hours per week.

This latest measure builds on a range of supports already in place.

The Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Programme provides two years of pre-school without charge and has a participation rate of 96%. Over 70% of families on low income report they could not send their child to pre-school without it.

The National Childcare Scheme (NCS) complements ECCE, giving universal and targeted subsidies to reduce costs to parents. Recent improvements include the extension of the universal subsidy to children under 15 and two increases to the minimum hourly subsidy, now worth €96.30 per week for 45 hours.

In addition, the fee management system introduced through Core Funding has made sure the investment in affordability is not absorbed by unnecessary fee increases. Core Funding has enjoyed high participation rates to date, with 92 per cent of eligible services signed up to Core Funding in the recently concluded programme year.

The fourth year of Core Funding began on 1 September 2025 and as of 22 September 2025, 90% of eligible providers had signed up to the fourth year of Core Funding, almost 4,300 services. This represents an increase of 5% since this time last year.

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.

While this 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 sign up to Core Funding and thereby benefit from the significant financial supports it offers to them and the certainty it provides to parents through the associated fee management measures.

Work is under way to develop an action plan to build an affordable, high-quality, accessible early learning and care and school-age childcare system, informed by stakeholder consultation. This will set out future steps to reduce parental fees further to €200 per month.