Early Childhood Care and Education
Dail Éireann — 2025-04-29
============================================================

Norma Foley (FF), Kerry

I agree with much of what the Deputy said. It is much of Government policy insofar as the key elements of that policy are, in the first instance, to manage and reduce costs for parents, which is a key anchor, and, second, to ensure sustainability of the service is being provided and that providers are sustainable in moving forward. A further element is to increase provision of places and to ensure we have a workforce that is properly recompensed for the work it does in this area.
On affordability for parents, and I referenced this, significant core funding of almost €1 billion by the Government has gone into ensuring that money is in place to ensure reduced costs for parents. In addition, the national childcare scheme has undergone a number of enhancements, which include the extension of the universal subsidy to all children under 15. There have been two increases to the minimum-----

---

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/2025-04-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:53:44+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-04-29