Emer Currie (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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366. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality whether the system to track hours of attendance through the National Childcare Scheme will be revised, to give more flexibility to parents to be able to collect children early without being penalised by having their subsidies cut. [60808/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Many families avail of the National Childcare Scheme (NCS) as a way to reduce the cost of their early learning and childcare. NCS subsidies are awarded as an hourly rate, along with a maximum number of weekly hours that the subsidy will be paid for. It is between the parent and provider to agree on the hours of childcare based on the family's requirements and what sessions the provider can offer.

As part of NCS rules, if a child attends fewer than their agreed hours for a consecutive 8-week period, a warning will issue to the parent alerting them to the situation. At this point, if the child attends their agreed hours for a full week after this warning is issued, then no further action is taken. It is only if the under-attendance continues for a further four weeks that the number of subsidised hours awarded under the Scheme will be revised to reflect the average number of hours that were actually attended by the child over the previous 12-week period.

To be clear, this means a child can attend below their agreed upon NCS hours for a total of 12 consecutive weeks before the subsidy is adjusted. The provider only provides details to Pobal, the scheme administrator, on the number of hours the child has actually attended at the point where they have been under-attending for 8 consecutive weeks.

This is a key financial and governance control to ensure that Exchequer funding is used responsibly, and not to fund full-time places in respect of a child actually attending part-time hours.

Finally, I would note that the Department will soon commence an evaluation of the NCS. This will include consultation and engagement with parents, educators and representative organisations. This evaluation will examine how the NCS is performing currently and identify ways in which the NCS can better support families. As part of this evaluation, the hours-based model of the NCS will be reviewed.

Emer Currie (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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367. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality the percentage of community childcare services compared to overall childcare services in every county; and the reasons for variance. [60810/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Each year, Pobal compiles data from Early Learning and Care (ELC) and School Age Childcare (SAC) providers as part of the Early Years Sector Profile. This data is sourced from both the Annual Early Years Sector Profile Survey (AEYSP) and the Early Years Platform (EYP). The most recent published data available on Service Providers is for the 2023/2024 programme year.

The table below provides figures for the total number of all ELC and SAC Service Providers in each Local Authority area and the number of community services as percentages of the total number of ELC and SAC services in each area.

As can be seen from the table below the local authorities with the highest proportion of community services for the 2023/2024 programme year were Leitrim (64%) and Monaghan (62%), while the local authorities with the lowest proportion of community services were Kildare (4%) and Dublin - Fingal (6%).

There is a range of potential reasons for the wide variety of provision types across the country, including historical funding schemes (notably the Equal Opportunities Childcare Programme and the National Childcare Investment programme which operated in the period 2000-2010), existence of different forms of provision and community infrastructure, and access to appropriate buildings or capital investment.

Local authorities can have an effect on the type of provision facilitated through buildings they own though I note that local authorities are independent in the exercise of their functions. Many local authorities work with their City/County Childcare Committee when making such decisions and I welcome this engagement.

Emer Currie (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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368. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality the engagement or opportunity for feedback that takes place with services who leave Core Funding; to gather valuable learnings which could prevent other services from leaving, could encourage services to rejoin Core Funding, and could ultimately protect parents from fee hikes. [60811/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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I am aware that a small number of service providers have regrettably chosen to withdraw from Core Funding.

In the interest of clarity, transparency and consistent reporting, I have defined a service that left Core Funding as any service that had a gap between contracts for Core Funding of 4 or more weeks. There are a number of reasons that a service might fall into this definition, for example a service could have withdrawn from the scheme, been removed from the scheme for breach or rules, or experienced a delay in re-contracting following a change of circumstance application or between programme years. In relation to withdrawals specifically, services may choose to leave the scheme mid-year for a multitude of reasons including being denied a fee increase, temporary closures, financial difficulties and administrative requirements. Many services have left and later re-joined the scheme. There may be a small number of services who left the scheme and subsequently closed at a later date and are not captured in the figures below.

As of 5 August 2025, 4,807 childcare services were registered with Pobal. Of those, 141 had left Core Funding at one point over the past 3 years and continued to operate outside of this scheme on this date. A further 336 services had left Core Funding but later rejoined and were signed up to the third year of the scheme on this date. 4,056 services, an overwhelming majority, have continued to participate in Core Funding from the date on which they first signed up for the scheme.

This means that of the 477 services that joined Core Funding and then left, the majority of this cohort returned at a later point.

274 services never participated in Core Funding.

Between 5 and 31 August 2025, two additional services reached the end of their notice period and withdrew from Core Funding.

If a Partner Services wishes to withdraw from the Core Funding Programme, they must provide 3 months’ notice to the Scheme Administrator. This must be done by submitting a Service Request on the Early Years Early Years Hive outlining the withdrawal date and the reason for the withdrawal.

However, if an existing Partner Service decides not to enter a contract for the new programme year starting on September 1, they, as private businesses, would no longer be subject to the provisions of the Core Funding Agreement and, by extension, the required minimum notice period to parents. They are also not required to provide a reason for choosing not to reapply for Core Funding to the Scheme Administrator.

In relation to withdrawals specifically, services may choose to leave the scheme mid-year for a multitude of reasons including being denied a fee increase, temporary closures, financial difficulties, administrative requirements and personal reasons such as retirement. Many services have left and later re-joined the scheme.

The Department is committed to ongoing engagement on this matter.

While the State cannot mandate providers to participate in the scheme, 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 2022 to over €405 million in 2026). This represents an increase of over 56% in Core Funding in four years.

The Budget 2026 allocation will facilitate:

• Natural capacity growth of 4.2% across the sector.
• Additional capacity growth created by the new Building Blocks grants.
• Support for providers in adhering to the fee management conditions including the continued fee freeze and reductions to the maximum fee caps in the 2026/2027 programme year.

Emer Currie (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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369. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality for the average weekly fee for childcare services in and out of core funding. [60812/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Core Funding is a supply-side grant to early learning and childcare providers towards their operating costs. It is designed to deliver sustainability for providers through increased funding to the sector, paid on a consistent and equitable basis.

Adherence to the Core Funding fee management system is a primary condition of receiving the significant State funding that is available through the scheme, which has increased from €259 million in year 1 up to €390 million which is currently available for year 4. The fee management system requires compliance with a fee freeze at September 2021 levels and the new maximum fee caps.

The fee freeze has been in place since the launch of Core Funding in 2022, with new fee management developments having been introduced in September 2024. These included fee caps on new entrants to the scheme, and a Fee Increase Assessment process which gave low-fee services the opportunity to apply to increase their fees up to an approved level.

From September 2025, fee caps will now apply to all services in Core Funding. Under these new fee caps, the maximum fee for a full day place – of between 40-50 hours per week, the most common full day care operating hours – will be no more than €295 per week (before State subsidies under the National Childcare Scheme and the ECCE programme are deducted), with a maximum fee of €354 for 50 or more hours of care per week.

This is an important step towards the reduction of childcare fees to €200 per month over the lifetime of this Government, with further improvements planned for the year ahead. €20.6 million in brand new funding was secured in Budget 2026 to support providers in adhering to Core Funding 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.

Each year Pobal compiles data on behalf of the Department from Early Learning and Care (ELC) and School Age Childcare (SAC) providers as part of the Early Years Sector Profile (EYSP). As part of the AEYSP survey, service providers are asked to indicate the fee charged for each care type before deductions for subsidies are applied.

The most recently published fee data for the 2023/24 programme year indicates that the average (median) weekly fee per child in early learning and care before subsidies was €190 for full day, €110 for part-time, and €75 for sessional. The average (median) weekly fee per child before subsidies for in-term school age childcare was €5 per hour and €165 per week for out of term school age care. As the distribution of fees is skewed towards lower values, the median value is more representative of the mid-point of the data.

4,622 services with an active DCDE contract for the 2023/24 programme year were invited to complete the Annual Early Years Sector Profile survey 2023/24. Data from the survey was collected between 7 May and 7 June 2024. A total of 4,021 services completed the survey, with a response rate of 87%.

The most recently published fee data from the 2023/24 programme year is available at www.pobal.ie/childcare/fees. Data collection for the 2024/25 survey took place between 06 May and 03 June 2025. In total, 4,225 services completed the survey during the data collection window, with a response rate of 87%. Data cleaning is currently in progress and the results will be published on the Early Learning and Childcare Data website as soon as they are available.

These data reflect a time before maximum fees had been introduced for services participating in Core Funding, and the composition of services within and outside of Core Funding may have changed in the intervening time. The tables below outline the average and median fees for each type of provision. It is also important to note that the fees outline below are before the Universal or Income Assessed subsidies are applied.

Services availing of Core Funding must complete the Annual Early Years Sector Profile. The survey is optional for any service not availing of Core Funding and, although some services do participate, the number of services is too small to be accurately extrapolated. Therefore, the fees outlined below should not be taken as truly representative of the full cohort of services not participating in Core Funding. I am grateful for all services who choose to participate in this important survey which improves the evidence-base available for policy formulation.

Table 1: Average and median weekly fees for services in Core Funding in June 2024

Table 2: Average and median weekly fees for services not in Core Funding in June 2024

Service counts reflect the number of services reporting a fee value for the relevant care type in the 2023/2024 Annual Early Years Sector Profile survey.

Emer Currie (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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370. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality the means by which she intends to support parents who have been subjected to fee increases, whose provider has left core funding. [60813/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The Department of Children is aware that a small number of service providers have regrettably chosen to withdraw from the Core Funding scheme. However, uptake of Core Funding remains strong. The fourth year of Core Funding began on 1 September and as of 3 November there were over 4,500 services signed up to Year 4 of Core Funding, a 5 per cent increase on this time last year. This is the highest number of Partner Services in Core Funding at any point since the scheme was launched in 2022 and the number continues to grow.

In the interest of clarity, transparency and consistent reporting, I have defined a service that left Core Funding as any service that had a gap between contracts for Core Funding of 4 or more weeks. There are a number of reasons that a service might fall into this definition, for example a service could have withdrawn from the scheme, been removed from the scheme for breach or rules, or experienced a delay in re-contracting following a change of circumstance application or between programme years. In relation to withdrawals specifically, services may choose to leave the scheme mid-year for a multitude of reasons including being denied a fee increase, temporary closures, financial difficulties and administrative requirements. Many services have left and later re-joined the scheme. There may be a small number of services who left the scheme and subsequently closed at a later date and are not captured in the figures below.

As of 5 August 2025, 4,807 childcare services were registered with Pobal. Of those, 141 had left Core Funding at one point over the past 3 years and continued to operate outside of this scheme on this date. A further 336 services had left Core Funding but later rejoined and were signed up to the third year of the scheme on this date. 4,056 services, an overwhelming majority, have continued to participate in Core Funding from the date on which they first signed up for the scheme.

This means that of the 477 services that joined Core Funding and then left, the majority of this cohort returned at a later point.

274 services never participated in Core Funding.

Between 5 and 31 August 2025, two additional services reached the end of their notice period and withdrew from Core Funding.

While the State cannot mandate providers to participate in the scheme, 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 2022 to over €405 million in 2026). This represents an increase of over 56% in Core Funding in four years.

The Budget 2026 allocation will facilitate:

• Natural capacity growth of 4.2% across the sector.

• Additional capacity growth created by the new Building Blocks grants.

• Support for providers in adhering to the fee management conditions including the continued fee freeze and reductions to the maximum fee caps in the 2026/2027 programme year.

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 now in its fourth programme year, funds services based on the number of places available.

In addition to this funding, there are wider financial supports available where a service is experiencing financial difficulty or has concerns about their viability. These supports can be accessed through the Department's established case management process, which can be accessed while remaining within Core Funding.

All services have been encouraged to avail of these supports as an alternative to withdrawing from Core Funding and removing the benefit of Core Funding to children and their families.

As Core Funding is an optional scheme, service providers have the autonomy and business freedom to choose not to join Core Funding, even though this will result in the loss of the significant financial support it offers them and the substantial benefits and certainty it brings to the families accessing the services.

Core Funding remains open, and these services may reapply during the year and can join the overwhelming majority of providers who are contracted for Year 4 of the Scheme, with applications ahead of this time last year and 92% of providers now signed up.

Regardless of whether the early learning and childcare service which their child attends is participating in Core Funding, both the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme and the National Childcare Scheme (NCS) are currently available to parents.

These schemes have made a significant impact on improving affordability of early learning and childcare for families.

The ECCE Programme, which provides two years of pre-school without charge, enjoys participation rates of 96%. Over 70% of families on low-income report that they would not be able to send their child to pre-school without this Programme.

The National Childcare Scheme (NCS) complements the ECCE Programme, providing subsidies – both universal and targeted - to reduce the costs to parents for children to participate in early learning and childcare.

The NCS has undergone a number of enhancements in recent years to further improve affordability for parents. These include the extension of the universal subsidy to all children under 15 and two increases to the minimum hourly subsidy, which is now worth a minimum of €96.30 per week for 45 hours. The NCS increases since 2022 are there to benefit all families using registered childcare.

Parents experiencing difficulty in relation to their early learning and childcare needs are encouraged to contact their local City/County Childcare Committee who can support and advise them on options in their area. The network of 30 City/County Childcare Committees across the country are in a position to match children and families to services operating with vacant places and engage proactively with services to explore possibilities for expansion among services, particularly where there is unmet need.

The Department has a list of all Core Funding Partner Services which is updated regularly on the Department’s website under How to Find a Partner Service.

Parents/guardians can also use the following website to find Core Funding Partner Services in their area: Childcare Service Search · Applicant Portal (www.ncs.gov.ie/en/childcare-search/).

The National Childcare Scheme (NCS) remains available to families as a means of reducing their early learning and childcare costs. The Scheme is available to families who use either Partner Services (i.e. those contracted into Core Funding) or Non-Partner Services (those not contracted into Core Funding).

For families with an existing and valid NCS award, this can be used with any early learning and childcare service provider who has contracted to deliver the Scheme and is registered with Tusla. However, it should be noted that parents should give providers four weeks’ notice of a departure from a service if they are ending a registered childcare place.

For families who have not yet applied for the NCS, applications can be submitted online through www.ncs.gov.ie using a verified MyGovID. Alternatively, families can contact the Parent Support Centre on 01 906 8530 to request a postal application.

If families are seeking an alternative place, it may be useful to engage with a local City/County Childcare Committee (CCC) for assistance. Details of local CCCs can be found here. Alternatively, a Childcare Search function is available on www.ncs.gov.ie which details a full list of the services offering the NCS and/or other programmes such as ECCE or whether they are contracted to Core Funding (i.e. Partner Services).

Work is also under way to develop an Action Plan to build an affordable, high-quality, accessible early learning and childcare system, informed by stakeholder consultation. This will set out future steps to reduce the cost of early learning and childcare further to €200 per month over the lifetime of the Government.