In total, data from Pobal confirms that, as of 26 November, there are 113 providers operating in Co. Louth – 109 of whom are in receipt of Core Funding – representing a 96.46% county-wide take-up rate of Core Funding.
While the Department cannot mandate providers to participate in the Scheme, every effort has been made to carefully design Core Funding to meet the policy objectives including to achieve high levels of participation by providers.
Participation in Core Funding is optional, but it remains open throughout the year to all registered providers subject to their agreement to the terms and conditions of the Scheme.
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 why a service might fall into this definition. For example, a service may have withdrawn from the scheme, been removed from the scheme for breach of rules, or experienced a delay in re-contracting following a change of circumstance application or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 that are not captured in the figures below.
The table below provides a breakdown of the services in Louth that left 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.
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COUNTY DIVISION
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Year 1 (2022/2023)
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Year 2 (2023/2024)
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Year 3 (2024/2025)
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Year 4 (2025/2026)
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County Louth
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6
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2
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3
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0
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It should be noted that of the 11 services in Louth that have left the scheme at one point, 10 services were contracted to Core Funding as of 3 November 2025 - meaning over 90% of services in Louth who left the scheme at one point have now returned to Core Funding.
The Department does not provide the names of services that have left the scheme. However, the Department has a list of all Core Funding Partner Services which is updated regularly on the Departments website under www.gov.ie/en/department-of-children-disability-and-equality/publications/how-to-find-a-partner-service/.
