Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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325. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality the amount of funding allocated to her Department in Budget 2026 for the purpose of reducing the maximum fee cap from its current level of €295 per week. [56136/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The Programme for Government commits to progressively reducing the cost of childcare to €200 per month per child, and to ensuring that providers’ fees are open, transparent and equitable and readily available to parents, and to maintaining the fee cap.

One of the main vehicles for delivering these commitments is the Core Funding scheme. Core Funding is a supply-side payment to early learning and childcare services to support them with their operating costs, and is designed to support affordability, quality and sustainability in the sector.

A key feature of Core Funding is the introduction of a system of fee management, to ensure that affordability measures and increased investment are passed on to parents/guardians. This began with an effective fee freeze from September 2022. In return for significant funding through the scheme, Partner Services agree not to raise their fees above what was charged to parents as on 30 September 2021.

Core Funding has seen consistent increased State investment to the sector year on year. An allocation of €405.21 million was secured in Budget 2026 for Core Funding. This is an increase of €51.97 million on the 2025 allocation of €353.23 million – representing a 15% year-on-year increase. The 2026 Core Funding allocation represents a 56% increase over the initial Core Funding allocation of €259 million secured in 2022.

€20.2 million in brand new funding for a full programme year has been secured to support providers in adhering to the fee management conditions including reductions in the maximum fee caps in the 2026/2027 programme year. This will guarantee that Core Funding’s monetary protections will continue to be passed on to families while ensuring sustainability and stability for the sector.

In addition to funding increases, changes were made to the fee management system for the fourth year of Core Funding. A cap on fees, which was introduced for First-Time Partner Services in Year 3, has been reduced and extended to all new and existing Partner Services. Under these new fee caps, the fee for a full day place – of between 40-50 hours per week, the most common full day care operating hours – can be charged at no more than €295 per week (before State subsidies under the National Childcare Scheme (NCS) and the ECCE programme are deducted), with a fee cap of €354 for more than 50 hours of care.

When the maximum fees for Year 4 were set earlier this year, 460 Partner Services (10% of Scheme participants) were identified as having at least one fee option above the corresponding maximum fee. These services were required to reduce any affected fees from 1 September 2025 in order to continue to receive payments under Core Funding.

90% of Partner Services already charge far less than the maximum fee caps and are therefore unaffected. The majority of these services remain bound by the fee freeze, wherein they cannot increase their fees beyond the levels charged in September 2021.

The Department continues to promote affordability for parents without compromising the viability of businesses in the sector. Fee management measures are therefore calibrated so as not adversely impact the sustainability of the sector, and appropriate safeguards will be carefully considered during planning for future developments.

Full details of Core Funding 2026/27, including new fee management measures, will be announced in the coming months.