National Economic and Social Council Dail Éireann — 2024-03-05 ============================================================ Leo Varadkar (FG), Dublin West On the issue of childcare fees, providers that are in the scheme have reduced their fees by approximately 25% and will reduce them by a further 25% in September. Providers that are outside the scheme are different because we do not control their fees. Even if we had a fully State-run system, I imagine there would still be private crèches and private childcare providers, unless one made them illegal, which I do not think anyone is proposing. I do not have a proper read on the number of childcare providers that are pulling out of the scheme. That is something on which I will have to make inquiries to the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman. It might be a very small number, in which case it would be one type of problem. If it is a very large number, it would be a very different problem. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2024-03-05/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:52:45+00:00 Sitting date: 2024-03-05