Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 21 November 2023
422. Deputy Brendan Griffin asked the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth for clarification on a matter (details supplied); the steps that will be taken to rectify a situation in County Kerry; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [50569/23]
View answerCore Funding, which commenced in September 2022, is a grant to Early Learning and Care (ELC) and/or School Age Childcare (SAC) providers towards their operating costs. Its primary purpose is to improve pay and conditions in the sector as a whole and improve affordability for parents as well as ensuring a stable income to providers.
All Partner Services that had an active Core Funding Contract during the 2022/2023 Programme Year must provide validated Financial Returns as per their Core Funding Partner Service Funding Agreement.
Core Funding payments to providers must run on a programme year, September-August, in line with the school year, the operation of the Early Learning and Care (ELC) and School-Age Childcare (SAC) sector, and the payments made to providers under the other DCEDIY schemes. Therefore, the financial returns cover the period from 1st September 2022 to 31 August 2023 and must be submitted by an accountant from a registered practice or a registered professional body (ACA, ACAA, CPA, and CIMA), on behalf of each Partner Service.
In order to fulfil the Financial Returns requirement, Partner Services will return a trial balance, which covers the reporting period 1 September 2022 to 31 August 2023. My Department is not requesting audited accounts, Partner Services are instead being asked to provide a trial balance mapped to the Core Funding Chart of Accounts, which has been reviewed, signed off and submitted by an accountant. This trial balance created contains a list of nominal codes from the Core Funding Chart of Accounts, this have been created to ensure that there is consistency in the classification of financial information across the sector.
Services that already use accountancy packages should be able to extract their trial balance from their package and map it to the Core Funding nominal codes from the Chart of Accounts. However, if a service does not use an accountancy package, a series of resources have been designed to assist services with meeting this requirement.
The Trial Balance guidance documents and additional support resources are available to Providers on the Hive.
My Department acknowledges that there is additional administration for providers with the introduction of new schemes such as the NCS and Core Funding, and has allocated €32.13 million for administration under Core Funding in year two, and €35.34m for the third year of the scheme.
In addition, a number of targeted supports are being considered by my Department to enable Core Funding Partner Services to comply with the financial reporting requirement. Officials with my Department are engaging with members of the Early Learning and Childcare Stakeholder Forum on this matter and have had two meetings to date, with a third to be scheduled in the coming days.
In any instances where a service is experiencing financial difficulty, they can reach out to their local City/County Childcare Committee and avail of Case Management Supports. This can include operational supports as well as financial supports through Sustainability Funding if deemed appropriate.
