Childcare Services Dail Éireann — 2026-05-19 ============================================================ Christopher O'Sullivan (FF), Cork South-West I thank Deputy Ward for raising this. I will try to answer to best of my ability on behalf of the Minister, Deputy Foley. It was a pre-election commitment by both our parties but massive inroads have been made into reducing the cost of childcare. I remember hearing debates in here where it was frequently described as a second mortgage. We have significantly reduced the cost of childcare in most instances. Clearly the Deputy is describing anomalies and outliers there but certainly the feedback we received was this intervention worked. In my constituency, with the changes in core funding, there were some issues and some providers left but that seems to have cooled off a bit in my part of Ireland. Obviously the Deputy is describing a genuine situation that clearly needs to be looked at but I will just outline the inroads that have been made. When first introduced in 2022, core funding had an annual allocation of €259 million, of which €210.8 million was entirely new funding to the sector. That annual allocation has increased each year since and exceeds €390 million for year 4 of the scheme, which started in September. This represents an increase of over 50% in core funding in three years. The allocation for core funding for year 5 of the scheme will increase again by 23% to over €480 million. This will support a range of important priorities, including maintaining fees at 2021 levels in year 5, supporting further improvements in pay to staff and supporting services in adhering to fee management conditions, which will ensure affordability for families and sustainability and stability for staff. Uptake of core funding remains strong. As of 4 May 2026, there were 4,633 services signed up to the fourth year of core funding, which represents a 93% uptake by eligible services. This is the highest number of partner services in core funding at any point since the scheme was launched in 2022. The Minister, Deputy Foley, is encouraged by this rate of participation. It shows the vast majority of families will continue to benefit from the scheme’s fee management conditions. The Minister is aware a small number of services have regrettably chosen to withdraw from core funding. The Department, through the local childcare committees, CCCs, engages directly with any such service to highlight the benefits of staying in core funding, not only for their service but also for the families who avail of them. The Minister remains hopeful these providers may reconsider their decision, as many have previously. Core funding is a supply-side grant to early learning and childcare providers towards their operating costs. It is designed to promote affordability for parents and sustainability for providers through increased funding to the sector, paid on a consistent and equitable basis. As core funding is an optional scheme, providers have the autonomy to withdraw from or choose not to participate in the scheme. It is a matter for providers to decide whether they wish to sign up to core funding and benefit from the significant financial supports it offers to providers and the certainty it gives to parents through the associated fee management measures. The Department has a list of all core funding partner services which is updated regularly on the Department’s website. Regardless of whether the early learning and childcare service which a child attends is participating in core funding, both the early childhood care and education, ECCE, programme and the national childcare scheme, NCS, are currently available to parents. The local childcare committee can provide contact information for parents should they need help to secure alternative places. Parents and guardians can also use the dedicated NCS website to find core funding partner services in their area. Those statistics highlight that the year-on-year increase in core funding has been a success. We have a 93% participation rate. This is not to take away from the example the Deputy has given, where clearly this has not worked. Clearly, in the area where the Deputy is, costs remain high and viability remains difficult for some of the providers. --- 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/2026-05-19/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:46+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-19