Early Childhood Care and Education Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17 ============================================================ Norma Foley (FF), Kerry I reiterate that the process is an open one. It is open to anyone to get involved and to engage in the process. We would absolutely welcome existing childminders, including those who are registered and those who are not registered, all of them, coming forward to share their thoughts and views on what might be done to support it better going forward. I again reiterate that we hope in the coming weeks to make the announcement around eight proposals for State-led childcare this year. Including for rural Ireland, opportunities remain open for any group, individual or organisation that wants to reach out to the city and county childcare committees with proposals whether a proposed building, a site, a building that requires purchase or even a building that simply requires fit out. The Department is very flexible in offering any kind of support we can to enhance the availability of the provision of early years and childcare facilities. --- 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