The Tusla Early Years Inspectorate maintain the register of pre-school services, school age services and childminding services in line with the requirements under the Child Care Act 1991. These registers are publicly available online on the Early Years Inspectorate website. The registers are published a month in arrears, and the most recently available data is from the end of February 2026.
The Register of Preschool Services is available by county at https://www.tusla.ie/services/preschool-services/early-years-providers/register-of-early-years-services-by-county/
The Register of School Age Services is available at https://www.tusla.ie/uploads/content/External_Register_School_Age.pdf
The Register of Childminding Services is available at https://www.tusla.ie/uploads/content/Childminding_External_Register.pdf
Due to the format in which the data is collated by Tusla Early Years Inspectorate, it is not possible to determine the number of services registered to multiple providers as each service has its own unique registration number. Tusla also do not provide a breakdown of community and private settings in their published register. The register does specify the service type for each individual service such as sessional, part time and full time. However, a service can operate multiple service types as outlined on the registers.
Data on multi-site ownership is available through the Early Years Platform (EYP), a Client Relationship Management system administered by Pobal on behalf of the Department to administer Early Learning and Care and School-Age Childcare funding programmes.
EYP data does not include Tusla-registered services that do not provide a Department-funded programme/scheme.
Based on EYP data, the following table details the number of organisations with multi-site operations, and the numbers of services per organisation, as of 28 February 2026. At that time there were 5,104 services registered on the EYP, 2,088 of which were part of multi-site organisations comprising 2 or more services (registered under the same Tax Registration Number). In total, there were 596 multi-site organisations registered on EYP. Looking just at organisations comprising 3 or more services, there were 231 such organisations, and 1,358 services were part of these organisations.
|
Number of services in Multi-Site Organisation
|
Number of Organisations
|
|
2
|
365
|
|
3
|
114
|
|
4
|
46
|
|
5
|
21
|
|
6-10
|
32
|
|
11+
|
18
|
|
Total services in multi-site Organisations
|
Total Organisations
|
|
2,088
|
596
|
The following table details the number of services that are part of multi-site organisations with 3 or more services by type of services offered and community/private status, as of 28 February 2026.
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Community/Private
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Service Type Offered
|
Number or services in category that are part of multi-site organisations with 3 or more providers
|
|
Community
|
Full-day
|
46
|
|
|
Part-time
|
45
|
|
|
Sessional
|
55
|
|
|
School-Age Childcare
|
72
|
|
Private
|
Full-day
|
421
|
|
|
Part-time
|
54
|
|
|
Sessional
|
110
|
|
|
School-Age Childcare
|
548
|
|
|
Childminder/Drop-in
|
4
|
Note: Each service is recorded just once in the table based on the highest session type offered in the following order: Full-day, Part-time, Sessional, Childminder (ELC registration), Standalone School Age (including School Age Childminders), Drop-in only. Childminder and drop-in are combined in the above table. Service type is not available for 3 services.
