Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 29 February 2024
133. Deputy Brendan Griffin asked the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth his views on what further assistance the State can give to families towards the cost of childcare; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9728/24]
View answerMy Department provides a number of schemes which provides assistance to families with the cost of childcare both directly and indirectly, these include:
• The National Childcare Scheme (NCS)
• The Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Programme
• The Core Funding Scheme
The NCS is a subsidy provided to help parents to meet the cost of childcare and allow children to access Early Learning and School Age Childcare.
My Department has made a number of enhancements to the NCS over the last three Budgets to reduce the cost of childcare for parents availing of the NCS, including increasing the eligibility for the NCS universal subsidy and increasing the NCS universal subsidy from €0.50 to €1.40 per hour in January 2023, this change reduced the out of pocket cost of childcare for those availing of the NCS by 25% on average. From September 2024 the NCS universal subsidy will be increased to €2.14 per hour, a change which will reduce the cost of childcare for parents availing of the NCS by a further 25%.
My Department also funds the ECCE programme, which allows all children in the eligible age range to avail of 2 years of preschool. This is provided free of charge to the parent.
Alongside the affordability measures of the NCS and ECCE, the fee freeze in place in 95% of early learning and childcare services as a result of the Core Funding scheme will ensure that the NCS enhancements will not be absorbed by fee increases. Through a combination of these measures I am working to ensure that high quality early learning and childcare is accessible and affordable to all regardless of means.
The impact of the above changes on the affordability of childcare is being monitored, the NCS in particular is designed to allow for rapid changes to subsidies, income thresholds and certain other eligibility criteria as Government decisions are made and exchequer funding becomes available.
