Childcare Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
============================================================

Norma Foley (FF), Kerry

I join the Deputy in sending best wishes to my constituency colleague, Deputy Michael Healy-Rae. We are mindful of what he has had to endure and we wish him the speediest of recoveries. I am also mindful of his family. This is a traumatic time for them too. I know the whole House sends our best wishes.
On the Deputy's question, substantial progress has been made in the State-led early learning and childcare capital programme, which was launched at the end of January. The full business cases are being developed for a number of projects in preparation for final approval, with some of these close to completion now. Projects are developed into full business cases following the approval of a preliminary business case in line with the framework set out in the infrastructure guidelines. The nature and the development of the work required to prepare the full business case varies by project. They are all different and individual. It can include things like independent property valuation, building surveying, due diligence checks on the property, conveyancing, procurement and appointment of technical advisers, detailed design work and associated cost planning and operator selection. This is all required to be underpinned by appropriate legal and contractual arrangements.
In some instances, properties are at the point of being sale agreed. Operator selection has been undertaken in some projects and will proceed shortly in the case of others. A cost harmonisation exercise is being undertaken across the programme to ensure consistency in the reporting of capital costs and inform investment decisions, particularly from a cost transparency perspective. This is due to be completed in the coming weeks.
The projects currently being developed at full business case stage are spread across the country and, combined, would deliver more than 700 new places. I intend to make an announcement in the coming weeks regarding these specific projects following the agreement of sale prices. In parallel, a further tranche of projects has been prepared as preliminary business cases to bring forward to the steering group meeting later this month and I hope further projects will be approved in principle after that.

---

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/2026-09-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-17