Early Childhood Care and Education Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17 ============================================================ Norma Foley (FF), Kerry Just to be clear, significant work is under way to encourage more childminders into the registration process. A review is under way in terms of how that is working and what we could do differently in future, including what further supports we could provide or whatever the case might be. I am very pleased to have brought that review forward to give us a clearer line of sight of what we need to do to get more of the childminders on board, recognising their invaluable work and the important contribution they make to early learning and childcare. Specifically, in terms of the building blocks and the scheme that is there, a large proportion of the projects supported through building blocks have been in rural areas. It is important to make that point. The State-led process was announced in January. We are working at speed and I acknowledge the work of everybody involved. In the coming weeks, we are hoping to make announcements around the State-led projects. --- 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