Written answers
Wednesday, 12 November 2025
Department of Children, Disability and Equality
Childcare Services
Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North-Central, Fianna Fail)
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120. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality her plans to ensure that childcare providers participate in the core funding scheme; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [61294/25]
Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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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.
- Support for improved pay for early years educators and school-age childcare practitioners with implementation of new 2025 Employment Regulation Orders, with further increases in pay to be supported through enhancement in year 5 of the scheme.
- 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 this Department.
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 providers and the certainty it gives to parents through the associated fee management measures.
I wish to remind the Deputy that uptake of Core Funding remains strong. The fourth year of Core Funding began on 1 September and as of 5 November there were over 4,520 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.
I am encouraged by this rate of participation: it shows that Core Funding is working as intended, and the vast majority of families will continue to benefit from the scheme’s fee management conditions.
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