Michael Murphy (Tipperary South, Fine Gael)
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130. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality her plans to ensure adequate childcare places and staffing in south Tipperary, particularly in rural areas where providers are struggling to retain staff and meet demand despite the introduction of core funding supports; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [61426/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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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. Core Funding application data shows that between Year 1 and Year 3 of the scheme, annual place hours increased by over 15%. Budget 2025 secured funding for the fourth programme year that commenced in September of this year to facilitate a further 3.5% increase from September 2025. Budget 2026 has made provision for the fifth programme year for a further expansion in supply of 4.2% next year.

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.

Across all of Tipperary, Core Funding application data shows that between Year 1 and Year 3 of the scheme, annual place hours increased in the county by over 19%.

Many early learning and childcare services report recruitment and retention challenges. In a very competitive labour market and with low levels of unemployment, recruitment and retention is a challenge for all employers.

Part of this challenge is not caused by insufficient supply of staff, but by high levels of turnover. Data from the 2024 Annual Early Years Sector Profile survey shows the national turnover rate for the sector was approximately 25.8%, with the turnover rate in Tipperary below the national average at 23.7%.

Although the turnover rate is relatively high, Annual Early Years Sector Profile data shows just under 30% of the national turnover rate reflects staff moving from one provider to another and that the number of educators/practitioners working in the sector has increased year on year by approximately 10% and specifically in Tipperary the number of staff working in the sector has grown by 6% from 2023 to 2024.

However, improvement in pay is certainly key to improving recruitment and retention rates, as is the full implementation of Nurturing Skills.

Pay is one of a number of issues impacting the early learning and care and school-age childcare workforce. The level of pay for early years educators and school-age childcare practitioners does not reflect the value of their work for children, families, society and the economy.

As the State is not the employer of staff in the sector, neither I nor the Department can set wage levels or determine working conditions for staff in the sector.

The Joint Labour Committee is the formal mechanism established by which employer and employee representatives can negotiate minimum pay rates, which are set down in Employment Regulation Orders.

I acknowledge the Joint Labour Committee is independent in its functions, and I do not have a role in its statutory negotiation processes. However, outcomes from the Joint Labour Committee process are supported by Government through Core Funding. In this programme year 2025/26 Core Funding will increase by 6% to €350 million with an additional €45 million in ring-fenced Core Funding provided to support early learning and care services in meeting the increased cost of minimum pay rates in the sector.

As recently announced, the Minister of State for Employment, Small Business and Retail Alan Dillon has signed new Employment Regulation Orders for Early Years Educators and School-Age Practitioners.

The Orders commenced on 13th October 2025. They provide for an average of 10% increase to minimum hourly rates of pay. It is estimated that 67% of those working in the sector will see their wages increase as a result of the new minimum pay rates.

Improvements in pay is certainly key to improving recruitment and retention rates. The Government remains committed to ‘continue to implement Employment Regulation Orders to attract and retain early years educators’ and to making available a similar sum in 2026 to support a further future round of pay improvements negotiations through the Joint Labour Committee process

The Department continues to discuss issues of recruitment and retention with stakeholders through a Sub-Group of the Early Learning and Childcare Stakeholder Forum.

The general consensus of the Group is that pay is the single biggest issue but the Group continues to identify other actions, including:

• A Student Fast-track Process for recognition of studies to work in service out of term,
• The assessment of unfinished qualifications, where people who may have started a relevant qualification but did not get to finish it, can have what they completed assessed for meeting qualification requirements
• An agreement to promote career in the sector.

The development of State-led early learning and childcare services will be enabled by capital allocation provided in the revised National Development Plan 2026-2030. As announced in the context of Budget 2026, €36 million will be available in 2026 for early learning and childcare capital programmes. This will include acquisitions of new buildings through the State-led early learning and childcare programme, investment in expansion of existing early learning and childcare operators through the Building Blocks scheme and a number of quality initiatives including supports to childminders.

This work is being led by a new Forward Planning and Delivery Unit which is focused on identifying areas of need, forecasting demand, and planning for the delivery of public supply within the early learning and childcare sector where required.

Naoise Ó Muirí (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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131. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality the number of childcare service providers that have withdrawn from the core funding model; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [61497/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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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.

Every year there are a number of services who sign up to Core Funding in the weeks following the commencement of the programme year. For this reason, it is not yet possible to make an accurate assessment regarding whether further services have made the decision to no longer participate in Core Funding in the fourth programme year, which started on 1 September 2025.

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, administrative requirements and personal reasons such as retirement. 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 presented above.

Uptake of Core Funding remains strong. The fourth year of Core Funding began on 1 September and as of 4 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.

Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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132. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality the measures her Department is taking to reduce costs for childcare services; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [61546/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Core Funding is a supply-side grant to early learning and care (ELC) and/or school-age childcare (SAC) providers towards their operating costs. It is designed to deliver:

• Affordability for parents through ensuring no increases in fees, capping the maximum fees that can be charged, and offering the National Childhood Scheme (NCS) and the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme to all eligible children;
• Quality in services, including through better terms and conditions for staff and supporting graduate leadership in services; and
• Sustainability for providers through substantially increased funding to the sector, paid on a consistent and equitable basis.

Core Funding operates alongside the National Childcare Scheme, the Early Childhood Care and Education programme and Equal Start and constitutes additional income for providers on top of funding for these schemes, as well as income from parental fees.

The introduction of Core Funding in 2022 brought a significant increase in investment for the sector, with €259 million of funding paid directly to services in year 1 of the scheme, of which €210.8 million was entirely new funding to the sector.

Core Funding increased by 11% to reach €287 million for the second year of the scheme (September 2023 to August 2024), and again by another 15% to €331 million for the third year of the scheme (September 2024 to August 2025), and rising by a further 20% to over €390 million in the current fourth year of the scheme (September 2025 – August 2026).

2026 will see further investment in Core Funding, with the budget increasing by nearly 15% on the 2025 budget to €405 million. The increases in 2026 translate to a full year allocation of €437 million for Year 5 of Core Funding, which will run from September 2026 to August 2027, increasing by nearly 11% on the current year 4 allocation.

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.

James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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133. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality if she will highlight any work she is doing to improve supports and protections offered to parents whose crèche withdraws from core funding; the level of support provided to these parents each year since the scheme’s establishment; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [61555/25]

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 6 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.

The Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Programme, which provides two years of pre-school without charge, enjoys participation rates of 96%. Over 70% of families on low incomes 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.

Both the NCS and ECCE are available to parents regardless of whether the early learning and childcare service their child is attending is participating in Core Funding.

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.