Early Childhood Care and Education
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-24
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Michael Moynihan (FF), Cork North-West

I thank Deputy Sherlock very much for raising this matter. As she rightly said, a reception class has been in operation in St. Joseph's Co-Educational Primary School, East Wall, since 2002. This class operates as a preparatory infant year for four-year-olds. The reception class was one of a small number that operated prior to the establishment of the early childhood care and education, ECCE, scheme, to provide pre-junior infants education in certain communities. With the wide expansion of the ECCE scheme, this is now the only reception class that operates in the country. The Department has engaged with the school in respect of its teaching allocation for 2026-27 and has sanctioned a teaching post for the reception class for 2026-27. The Department will continue to engage with the school early in the 2026-27 school year with regard to the reception class. The early childhood care and education programme is a Government-funded, universal preschool programme designed to give children their first formal experience of early learning before primary school. It is funded by the Department of Children, Disability and Equality.
To cut to the chase, back in 2002, this class was sanctioned and it has been operational within St. Joseph's Co-Educational Primary School for quite some time. I have no doubt what Deputy Sherlock has articulated this morning are the facts. It has been a huge enabler for children prior to going into primary school and has given them certainty in it.
Sanction was given for this year and, as it is one of the only ones operational in the country, we continue to engage with and monitor it. A lot of investment and funding has gone into the education system and we continue to do that in urban and rural Ireland. The commitment I can give the Deputy today is that there will be early engagement with the school authorities in the next school year because we understand the value of it. It has been articulated in various documentation through the Department and extremely capably by the school authorities.
As the Deputy mentioned, it targets a particular cohort in a challenged community and has been a great enabler for it. We have sanction for 2026-27 and we are serious about engaging early in the school year in the forward planning for it. When it has been in operation - if my maths are correct, it is going into its 25th year this year and it has a long-established tradition - generations of students have benefited from that year. However, we have to evaluate it because we continue to invest in trying to upskill all school communities. The school community there has done amazing work and has taken advantage of the extra year to make sure the students coming from disadvantaged areas benefit fully from it, as the Deputy articulated.
Our commitment is for this year, 2026-27, and we will engage early with the school authorities again. I will take the valid points the Deputy made strongly on board as we prepare to engage with the school authorities early in the next school year.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:06+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-24