Early Childhood Care and Education
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
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Keira Keogh (FG), Mayo

State-led childcare will be a game-changer but we cannot just rely on the community and voluntary boards. In cities like Dublin and Cork, the boards may have accountants, HR professionals or solicitors guiding them. In rural Ireland, the same people who are on their GAA board are also often on the board of the community childcare facility, so we need to look at that. I also really welcome that a review is ongoing in relation to how we can better support private childminders to get registered. We need to reach out and allow people, even in a confidential way, to come forward. Good representative organisations are speaking for childminders but a lot of childminders are not even registered with those organisations. I held a public meeting and childminders were nearly afraid to come to it. An anonymous survey where they can engage in a confident way would be welcome. If we do not get increased registration soon with this deadline approaching, we could be in an even bigger crisis by September than we are in right now.

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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