Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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787. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality the current status of the national childcare strategy; when a formal strategy document is expected to be published; if stakeholder consultation has been completed; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [55253/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The Government is committed to ensuring access to affordable, quality early learning and care (ELC) and school-age childcare (SAC), with an investment of €1.48bn in the 2026 budget. This funding will allow my Department to build on recent progress in the gradual reduction of fees for parents, while also supporting supply and the quality of provision. New caps on maximum fees came into effect in September 2025 for all services in Core Funding, building on a range of enhancements to the National Childcare Scheme and Core Funding in recent years, reducing fees to parents.

Budget 2026 will enable Core Funding to continue to support fee-control measures, and will also allow for growth in the sector. The allocation for Core Funding in 2026 will ensure fees remain at 2021 levels for a majority of providers. As well as this, there will be a new maximum fee cap set to reduce costs for families paying the highest fees across the country. Further details of the new, lower maximum fee caps will be announced in the coming months.

The 2026 allocation for Core Funding will also support implementation of the recently announced Employment Regulation Orders (ERO), which will lead to a 10% increase in the minimum rate of pay for educators from 13 October.

There will also be enhancements in Year 5 of the scheme to improve pay for educators and school age childcare practitioners with implementation of new ERO.

Capital funding is also being made available in 2026 for the sector.

All of this will be detailed in the Action Plan on Accessible, High Quality, Affordable ELC and SAC, which the Department is continuing to develop. The Action Plan will be informed by a broad consultation process and will set out plans to achieve Programme for Government commitments, including the commitment to reduce maximum monthly fees to €200 over the lifetime of the Government.

Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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788. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality when the forward planning unit within her Department will publish outputs from its work on mapping childcare provision and identifying gaps; if this data will be made available, by county and constituency; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [55254/25]

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 is undertaking important work to identify areas of need, forecast demand, and prepare for the delivery of public supply of early learning and childcare sector in areas where it is 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, GIS mappers 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 has been undertaken to map available publicly subsidised supply. This involves combining data from multiple administrative sources, including child population data and applying mapping tools.

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.

The Forward Planning model is being designed primarily as a tool for internal analysis. The maps and data that the model will produce will contain protected categories of data and will therefore not be made generally available in full. As the model is further developed along with accompanying policy work related to supply, aggregated statistics, including statistics broken down by geographical area, may be made available if this is deemed compliant with data protection obligations.

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. Data on capacity at county level is available at www.pobal.ie/childcare/capacity/

Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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789. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality the timeline for implementing targeted measures to address the deficit of childcare places in constituencies such as Dublin Fingal West; if capital investment or capacity-building supports are planned for areas with sustained population growth; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [55255/25]

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.

Early learning and childcare capacity is increasing. Data from the Annual Early Years Sector Profile 2023/24 shows that the estimated number of enrolments increased by approximately 19% from the 2021/22 programme year. 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 childcare remains higher than available supply in certain parts of the country, particularly for younger children.

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.

A Forward Planning and Delivery Unit in this Department is progressing an important programme of work focused on identifying areas of need, forecasting demand, and planning for the delivery public supply within the early learning and childcare sector where required.

A forward planning model is in development which will be central to the 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 Department continues to support the ongoing development and resourcing of Core Funding which has given rise to a significant expansion of places since the scheme was first introduced. Core Funding, which is in its fourth programme year, funds services based on the number of places available.

This provides stability to services, and reduces the risk associated with opening a new service or expanding an already existing service. For the third programme year (2024/25), the allocation for Core Funding allowed for a 6% increase in capacity. Budget 2025 secured funding for the fourth programme year (2025/6) to facilitate a further 3.5% increase from September 2025. Budget 2026 has made provision for the fifth programme year (2026/7) for a further expansion in supply of 4.2%.

This increased investment will allow increases in the natural growth of the sector driven both by new services joining the sector and existing services offering more places and/or longer hours to families.

The total allocation for Core Funding in 2026/2027 programme year will increase to €436.54 million, an additional €43.90 million on the current full year allocation.

The Government is also supporting the expansion of capacity through capital funding. The Building Blocks Extension Grant Scheme is designed to increase capacity in the 1–3-year-old, pre–Early Childhood Care and Education, age range for full day care. Core Funding Partner Services could apply for capital funding to physically extend their premises or to construct or purchase new premises.

Capital funding allocated to the early learning and childcare sector under the National Development Plan has enabled significant investment in early learning and childcare. This allows existing Core Funding Partner Services to extend their existing premises or, in the case of community services, to construct or purchase new premises. The Scheme will deliver up to 1,500 full-day care places for 1- to 3-year-olds. The shortlisted services are now working with the Chief State Solicitor’s Office in completing the legal formalities of the scheme. I look forward to seeing these projects progress over the coming months.

The Programme for Government commits for the first time to provide capital investment to build or purchase state-owned early learning and 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. This work will be supported through capital investment under the revised National Development Plan.

The 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. Contact details for the Fingal County Childcare Committee may be found at

Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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790. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality when the building blocks capital grant scheme will be reopened; the eligibility criteria which will be appliable; the way her Department intends to prioritise areas with limited availability of places; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [55256/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The Building Blocks Extension Grant Scheme was launched on late 2024. The closing date for applications was 30th January. There were four strands to the scheme: Community Construction, Community Extension, Community Purchasing and Private Extension. A total of 78 applications were received with 50 applicants approved to progress to the next stage of the grant process.

As part of the National Development Plan review the allocation for my Department has increased to €795 million over the next five years. This increased funding will be used in part to provide additional early learning and childcare places through future capital programmes, which will primarily focus on implementing the commitment to capital investment in State-owned early learning and childcare facilities. Making available a further round of funding to existing services to expand their provision will also be enabled by the NDP allocation.

The Department will are currently finalising the details of future Building Blocks schemes and I expect to announce details in early 2026.

Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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791. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality the way in which north county Dublin scored in the most recent round of allocations under the building blocks capacity grant scheme; if any applications from the area were successful; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [55257/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The Building Blocks Extension Grant Scheme was launched in late 2024. The closing date for applications was 30th January. There were four strands to the scheme: Community Construction, Community Extension, Community Purchasing and Private Extension.

A total of 78 applications were received with 50 successful applicants approved to progress to the next stage of the grant process.

One application was received from a service based in North County Dublin, under the Private Extension strand. This service was successful in their application and is currently undertaking the legal formalities of the scheme, supported by our colleagues in the Chief States Solicitors Office.