Martin Daly
Question:851. Deputy Martin Daly asked the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality the average parental fee for full-day childcare in 2025 under the national childcare scheme, by county. [5677/26]
View answerTuesday, 27 January 2026
Questions (851)
Written answers
Each year Pobal compiles data on fees from Early Learning and Care (ELC) and School Age Childcare (SAC) providers as part of the Annual Early Years Sector Profile (AEYSP). As part of the AEYSP survey, service providers are asked to indicate the fee charged for each care type before deductions for subsidies, such as the National Childcare Scheme, are applied. As the distribution of fees is skewed, with most data points having low values and a few very high values influencing the mean, the median value is reported below as it is considered more representative of the mid-point of the data.
The most recently published fee data for the 2024/25 programme year indicates that the average (median) weekly fee per child (before subsidies) was €200.00 for full day care ELC.
To note, the National Childcare Scheme (NCS) provides subsidies – both universal and targeted - to reduce the costs to parents for children to participate in ELC. The NCS has been substantially expanded in recent years to further reduce the cost of ELC for families. This includes 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.
The fee data are available at www.pobal.ie/childcare/fees. Data collection for the 2024/25 survey took place between 06 May and 03 June 2025. In total, 4,225 services completed the survey during the data collection window, with a response rate of 87%.
The county breakdown is as follows:
|
County |
Full-day weekly fee |
|
Carlow |
€163.80 |
|
Cavan |
€178.30 |
|
Clare |
€180.00 |
|
Cork City |
€228.21 |
|
Cork County |
€211.20 |
|
Donegal |
€187.50 |
|
Dublin – Dublin City |
€230.87 |
|
Dublin – Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown |
€265.83 |
|
Dublin – Fingal |
€247.90 |
|
Dublin – South Dublin |
€230.00 |
|
Galway |
€186.00 |
|
Kerry |
€188.88 |
|
Kildare |
€235.00 |
|
Kilkenny |
€183.30 |
|
Laois |
€180.00 |
|
Leitrim |
€160.00 |
|
Limerick |
€180.00 |
|
Longford |
€172.50 |
|
Louth |
€210.00 |
|
Mayo |
€181.96 |
|
Meath |
€211.76 |
|
Monaghan |
€165.00 |
|
Offaly |
€200.00 |
|
Roscommon |
€177.02 |
|
Sligo |
€178.30 |
|
Tipperary |
€170.00 |
|
Waterford |
€180.00 |
|
Westmeath |
€191.65 |
|
Wexford |
€185.00 |
|
Wicklow |
€253.58 |
|
National |
€200.00 |
*Average is calculated as the median value for all services.