Childcare Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-23
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Norma Foley (FF), Kerry

I look forward to working with the Deputy at the committee. Just to be clear, 25% of families are already on the €50 per week or are paying less than that. I absolutely accept that there is much more work to do. In recent weeks, we have introduced the fee caps. The full cost for families availing of just less than 50 hours' service - this is the full day service that the vast majority of parents are availing of - is €198 per week. That is when the national childcare subsidy is included. That will now be reduced to €183 per week. We are seeing progress.
I already mentioned something that has been fought very hard for by so many different people in terms of children at risk of disadvantage, namely that the thresholds have been increased from €26,000 to €34,000 and from €60,000 to €68,000 in order to maximise people's access to the national childcare subsidy. Some progress has been made. There is more progress to be made, and we will continue that through phase 2 of the action plan.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-23/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:06+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-23