Early Childhood Care and Education
Dail Éireann — 2025-11-12
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Norma Foley (FF), Kerry

In 2026, current expenditure for early learning and childcare will rise to €1.48 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 9% or €125 million. This additional funding will deliver real and meaningful change to the lives of thousands of children and their families in 2026 as well as to early years educators, school-age childcare practitioners and providers. Some 105,250 children will be supported to access free pre-school education under the ECCE programme next year. Furthermore, 286,000 children will benefit from their statutory entitlement to the national childcare scheme subsidies to offset the cost of early learning and childcare next year. This represents a year-on-year increase of 14%, with 35,000 additional children to benefit from the scheme next year. A figure of 8,400 pre-school children with a disability or additional learning need will benefit from the highest level of support provided through the access and inclusion model, enabling their meaningful participation in the ECCE programme. This is an increase on this year's figure of 7,900 pre-school children. We will also see an increase in the number of services designated for targeted supports under Equal Start and an increase in the numbers of children benefiting from these targeted supports, including through the new Bia Blasta pre-school nutrition programme. This year, 787 services serving 35,000 children have a priority designation under Equal Start. Next year, we estimate that 820 services serving 37,000 children will have this priority designation. Next year, the allocation for core funding will rise by 15%, with the allocation for year five of this scheme set to reach at least €437 million. On top of this, the Government will make available additional funding next year for further improvements to staff pay. This significant level of funding will support a range of key Government priorities next year and into year five of core funding. It will allow us to continue to support growth in the sector, which we estimate will be 4.2% in year five of the scheme. It will allow us to continue to support providers with the cost of employment regulation orders. It will allow us to support providers to sustainably maintain the fee management conditions that are attached to core funding, including a new maximum fee cap that will be introduced in September.

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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/2025-11-12/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:05+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-11-12