Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 19 May 2026
863. Deputy Grace Boland asked the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality the number of early years education settings and childcare settings that have pulled out of CORE funding for each Dublin community childcare catchment area, in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36978/26]
View answerAs Core Funding is an optional scheme, services have the autonomy and business freedom to not participate in or withdraw from Core Funding, even though this will result in the loss of the significant financial support it offers them and the substantial benefits and certainty it brings to the families availing of these services.
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 There are a number of reasons that a service might fall into this definition, for example a service could have withdrawn from the scheme, been removed from the scheme for breach of rules, or experiences a delay in re-contracting following a change of circumstance application or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.
The table below provides a breakdown of the services in Dublin that left Core Funding in each programme year by local authority area. 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.
|
COUNTY DIVISION |
Year 1 (2022/2023) |
Year 2 (2023/2024) |
Year 3 (2024/2025) |
Year 4 (2025/2026) |
|
Dublin City |
17 |
56 |
28 |
1 |
|
Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown |
8 |
10 |
8 |
2 |
|
Fingal |
7 |
29 |
9 |
0 |
|
South Dublin |
9 |
17 |
8 |
1 |
|
TOTAL |
41 |
112 |
53 |
4 |
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.
As of 11 May 2026, there are 1,188 operating across these Local Authority Areas, 1,021 of whom are in receipt of Core Funding – representing an 85.94% take-up of Core Funding across those areas.
The final 2025/2026 withdrawal figures will be confirmed categorically after the end of the programme year, which concludes in August 2026.
Uptake of Core Funding remains strong. As of 11 May, over 4,630 services have signed up to the fourth year of Core Funding which represents 93% of all eligible services. Programme Year 4 has the highest number of Partner Services contracted for Core Funding since the scheme was launched in 2022.
