Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)

The core funding model has been tweaked quite significantly between years one and three. In year one, funding was allocated according to the number of hours and the number of children that a service had but we recognised after year one that smaller services were disadvantaged by that. In year two, we brought in two changes. We brought in a minimum floor of core funding below which no service would go, including even very small services. We also brought in a sessional-only rate for services that do ECCE only so they would get an additional payment. In year three, we significantly increased these so the floor rate is €14,000 and no service gets less than that under core funding. The minimum payment for sessional services is now €5,000. The big change in year three of the model was the application for a fee increase. Prior to that we had frozen everyone's fees at 2021 levels but recognising some services last raised their fees a number of years earlier, we wanted to make the opportunity for them to apply to raise their fees.

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