Aisling Dempsey
Question:259. Deputy Aisling Dempsey asked the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality if any providers returned to core funding, having previously left, in 2025; and the details of same. [4777/26]
View answerWednesday, 21 January 2026
Questions (259)
Written answers
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 For example, a service could have withdrawn from the scheme, been removed from the scheme for breach of rules, or experienced a delay in re-contracting following a change of circumstance application or between programme years. 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 below.
As of 3 November 2025, there were 5,035 services listed as being open on the Early Years Platform, of which 177 (4%) had left Core Funding at one point over the lifetime of the scheme to this date and continue to operate outside of this scheme. A further 415 services (8%) had left Core Funding at one point over the lifetime of the scheme to this date but later rejoined and were signed up to the fourth year of the scheme on this date. The overwhelming majority of services, 4,157 or 83%, have continued to participate in Core Funding from the date on which they first signed up for the scheme.
It should be noted that of the 592 services that have left the scheme at one point, some 415 services were contracted to Core Funding as of 3 November 2025 - meaning over 70% of services who left the scheme at one point have now returned to Core Funding.
The tables below provide a breakdown of engagement with Core Funding in each programme year. Some services may have left and rejoined multiple times across the three years, and therefore the figures cannot be summed across programme years from the breakdown below. It should be noted that not all of the currently operating services will have been in existence for all programme years, and not all services that had operated in previous years will be currently operating.
|
|
Year 1 (2022/2023) |
Year 2 (2023/2024) |
Year 3 (2024/2025) |
Year 4 (2025/2026) |
|
Continued Participation |
3,728 |
3,863 |
4,199 |
4,570 |
|
Left and later returned |
162 |
202 |
106 |
2 |
|
Left and remained out |
13 |
94 |
68 |
1 |
|
Did not participate |
1,132 |
876 |
662 |
462 |
Participation in Core Funding remains exceptionally strong. The fourth year of Core Funding began on 1 September 2025 and as of January 2026 over 4,590 services (93% of all eligible services) have now signed up to Year 4 of Core Funding. 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.