Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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166. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality if she will consider extending payments to ECCE providers to the month of December given the long duration between the last 2025 payment in November and next payment in January 2026. [61747/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The Early Childhood Care and Education programme (ECCE) is a free two-year pre-school programme available to all children within the eligible age range.

The 2025-26 ECCE programme year runs from 25/08/2025 until the 26/06/2026, aligned with the primary school calendar.

The ECCE payment schedule is issued prior to the commencement of the programme year allowing providers to manage their cash flow accordingly and is structured to ensure that services receive a minimum of 4 weeks' payments in advance.

The batch payment for ECCE, on 21 November 2025, is in respect of December 2025, therefore services receive payments in advance up to the end of December 2025 on this date.

Civil service financial rules require any January payments to issue from each Department’s 2026 financial allocation. Payment cannot be made in advance from a previous year’s allocation i.e. in advance in 2025 to cover a period in January.

The next batch payment will be on 6 January 2026, the first possible payment week in 2026 and will pay services up to 30 January 2026.