Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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135. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality if she will publish the methodology and outputs of the forward planning unit established in January 2024, including any mapping or prioritisation framework used to identify areas of acute childcare need; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [61498/25]

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.

Overall, early learning and childcare capacity is increasing. Data from the Annual Early Years Sector Profile in 2024 shows that the estimated number of enrolments has increased by 19% in the previous two years. However, it appears that demand for Early Learning and Care and School Age Childcare remains higher than available supply, particularly for younger children and in certain parts of the country.

The Forward Planning and Delivery Unit is pursuing an ambitious programme of work to identify areas of need, forecast demand, and deliver public supply within the childcare sector where required.

A forward planning model 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 using the expertise of statisticians on secondment from the Central Statistics Office 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 is currently being undertaken to map available publicly subsidised supply. This involves combining data from multiple administrative sources, including child population data, using GIS (Geographical Information System) 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.

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