Jen Cummins
Question:133. Deputy Jen Cummins asked the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality her plans to address the number of families who cannot access affordable childcare. [32989/25]
View answerWednesday, 18 June 2025
Questions (133)
Written answers
The Government has made significant commitments to improve accessibility, affordability and the quality of early learning and childcare provision.
Investment in early learning and childcare is now at unprecedented levels with public funding exceeding €1.37 billion in 2025, clearly demonstrating the Government’s commitment to this area.
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 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 Scheme is progressive in nature ensuring the highest levels of subsidies go to families that need them most.
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.
Record numbers of children and their families are now benefiting from the NCS. Almost 220,000 unique children benefited from an NCS subsidy in 2024.
Children in childminding settings that have come forward for registration, following changes to the childminder Tusla registration requirements last September, can also benefit from NCS subsidies.
The fee management system introduced through the Core Funding Scheme has ensured that the investment in affordability is not absorbed by unnecessary fee increases and/or uncapped fees. A cap on fees was introduced for services joining Core Funding for the first time in the third year. It was announced in June 2024 that a fee cap will apply to all services in Core Funding from September 2025.
An evaluation of the National Childcare Scheme is due to start this year. This evaluation will review how the Scheme has performed to date and identify potential enhancements that could be made. The findings from this evaluation will inform the work of my Department in reaching the Programme for Government commitment to cap childcare fees at €200 per month per child within the lifetime of this Government.
A detailed Action Plan to build an affordable, high-quality, accessible early learning and childcare system will be developed, informed by stakeholder consultation. This will include the steps to deliver the €200 per month cap and outline the timeline for achieving this.
Further progress on affordability will not be made in isolation and will be integrated with our efforts to improve access, availability and the quality of early learning and childcare provision.