2026-05-19

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit as teacht isteach chun déileáil leis an gceist seo. In the election in 2024 his party and mine made a commitment to reduce the cost of childcare. This is an important tenet and in the Dún Laoghaire constituency childcare was one of the major issues people were talking to me about. They were essentially paying a second mortgage to put their children into childcare. It is an enormous cost and an enormous burden on households. The proposed reduction we promised in the election was therefore welcome. It was proportionate and also doable. I recognise the work that has gone into putting this scheme in place to reduce the cost to €200 in line with that commitment. I recognise progress has been made in that area, yet we still see a situation where many schools are exciting the scheme. It is not working for them. The childcare providers are telling us they cannot operate the service they want to operate in line with the subsidies the Government is giving them. I want to draw particular attention to a school called Sharavogue in Glenageary in my constituency. It is a really good school that has been built up over a number of years by the owner, Betty Allen. A letter was sent out by her and Gillian Dawson, who is the manager of the school, to parents saying the school was exiting the scheme. This is a massive blow to the parents who have children in that facility. It is a crèche and a Montessori and provides a number of different levels of care to children. These are people who are dedicating to providing childcare. It is a facility that is based on quality and the team wants to provide a quality service to parents. They also want to be part of the scheme and to make the service as affordable as they possibly can. However, they have written to parents saying that on 28 August, Sharavogue will have to exit the scheme. It cannot survive with the scheme the Government is putting together. It is not that the management team have not engaged with the Department, as they have. They have brought their problems and their issues to the Government but for whatever reason those have not been addressed. We now have a situation where the children who are in Sharavogue, and more importantly their families and households, will not be able to avail of the scheme. To give an example of that what means, for Montessori from 7:45 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. the current fee per month is €1,332 and when the school leaves the scheme that will go up to €1,725. That is just one fee I have picked but it is a massive increase for a household and that is for one child, so where a family has more children in Sharavogue it will go up more. The school provides discounts and help where someone has multiple children in the facility but the point is these are people who are committed to providing childcare and providing quality. The management team have talked about the reasons they have to leave. Salaries is a big one. I have raised it with the Minister, Deputy Foley, in here before that running a childcare facility in Dún Laoghaire is more expensive than it is in much of the rest of the country because the living costs there are higher. She said there was no way to establish that but I totally disagree. Rents and property prices are higher and therefore the cost of living in the area is higher for staff. The school also talked about the cost of insurance, which has gone up and up. The cost of utilities was also raised. The cost of heating and of running the kitchen that provides food for the kids have gone up, as has the cost of cleaning and maintenance, the cost of food itself, the administrative cost and transport costs. All of these have gone up and the problem the management faces – and I can understand where they are coming from – is the scheme the Government has put in place is not reflecting that. They are not alone in thinking that as I could name four other facilities in the Dún Laoghaire constituency that are leaving the scheme for the same reasons. If we are serious about delivering on that commitment what are we going to do to keep them in this scheme? What provisions are we putting in place for childcare providers in Dún Laoghaire and the rest of the country to ensure they stay within the scheme – which they want to do – and deliver childcare at affordable prices for households and families across the country?

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.

I thank the Minister of State. I do not doubt his bona fides on this topic. I started by acknowledging the work that has been done. I believe the commitment to reduce the cost of childcare was a serious and sincere one. Insofar as I have had any dealings with the people who fund the programme for Government, I believe that. I recognise the progress, the increased funding and all the rest. However, I will say two things. First, the Minister of State said a small number of facilities have exited the scheme. I would be very interested in seeing an analysis as to where those facilities are. Are they predominantly in urban areas? I suspect they are, because as I said, I feel the costs in urban areas are higher because of the costs of property, rent, insurance, etc., and there is a greater demand on those providers. I previously asked for a situation where the level of subsidies paid to facilities would reflect the real cost for them of doing business, but it seems the Department is unwilling to engage on that level. The second thing is that remaining hopeful they will join is not enough. They actually have to be given an incentive. By the same token, there is no need to show Betty Allen and Gillian Dawson the merits of being in the scheme. They understand the merits. They want to be in the scheme. They were in the scheme and they want to continue in the scheme, but they cannot do so. There is no point in remaining hopeful that they might rejoin if nothing is being done to facilitate their rejoining. They do not want to leave the scheme but they are looking at a situation where it is unsustainable for them to stay in it. This is why, while I acknowledge the work that has been done, it is useless if there are facilities providing a quality service in an area where they are serving lots of households and people in communities and all the rest but they cannot sustain it. We need to look at the scheme again to make sure that exactly this kind of facility, like Sharavogue, is facilitated in continuing. We do not need to show this facility the merits of the scheme. We need to meet the problems this childcare centre has and address the legitimate, identifiable and verifiable concerns raised about the cost of doing business.

I was going to repeat the point about engagement with the city and county childcare committees to show facilities the merits of being in the scheme, but obviously the people the Deputy is talking about are, first of all, educators. This is 100% why they are in this area. They have a passion for it and they want to educate young kids. Second, they are also businesspeople. Obviously, they have gone through this, have gone up and down and in and out and decided - probably a very tough decision to make - that this was not for them. Clearly, however, considering the 93% uptake and the year-on-year increase, the scheme has been a success. As I said to the Deputy, while there were similar issues in my area and providers were dropping out of the scheme, that is no longer the case. It is an interesting question about urban areas that the Deputy is talking about. Perhaps this is a question on which we could go back to the Minister, Deputy Foley, in respect of where the 7% of facilities are that we are missing out on. That is a very valid question to ask. I totally agree with the Deputy that we need to plough on and continue this momentum in reducing childcare fees. It is a commitment we gave and we need to continue with this work. I thank the Deputy again for raising this issue on behalf of his constituents.